Machines

"We have always...been prosthetic bodies"(D.Shaw, Pg 81, 2008) 

This quote was not said by Shaw but merely quoted in his book Technoculture. It was said by a man who goes by the name of Stelarc, he was a futurism performance artist who's focus was on how he thought the human body was "obsolete". He see's the human body as needing technology to go forward in life and to discover more about itself and in many cases he is right. He thinks that us as humans are no less machines than the machines we make and that we can not live separate lives from the machine, rather we live together as one. Today more than ever has our lives been so close to that of the machine, we consume products made by machines everyday and it can only become a closer bond the more we invest in our technologies which is not necessarily a bad thing. 

"Information technologies, applied to understanding, visualizing and manipulating the human body have problematized the distinction between 'us', other species and machines". (D.Shaw, Pg 101, 2008) 

What Shaw is saying here is that the more we keep upgrading and making our machine methods easier to communicate with and understand, the smaller the boundaries get between us as humans and them as machines. We tend to forget how easy it is today to get involved with our machines compared to many years ago, we now have robotic toy animals that our kids begin to love rather than a real dog or cat and the likes of games consoles becoming virtual reality makes us feel immersed in new worlds and have new abilities that our own human bodies could not possibly do, thus we could definitely see these technologies as enhancements to our everyday lives.

One unit in our planet that is constantly called a machine is our military system. Know for following rules and obeying commands they would be the easiest people to point at if you thought anyone was like machines. "A well disciplined army, in fact, can be compared to a well oiled machine"(D.Shaw, Pg 82, 2008). With this quote I can strongly agree that the military operate like a machine, military follow and obey orders like a machine, if the military loss a soldier they get another one just like a component getting broke in a machine, it will get fixed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Shaw, D. (2008) Technoculture: The Key Concepts; Oxford Berg Press (P.81-102)

New Media as a Cyborgian Encounter

"the concept of 'human' is unthinkable without technology but we act as if it is." (Shaw, 2008, pg.81)
With this statement we are lead to believe that the if it wasn't for technology then we as humans would not exist. Now in the early years of human they may have invented and needed stone age technology to fend for themselves and progress but this isn't what this statement argues. This statement refers to how us as humans interact with the everyday technology or New Media technology.
With this statement I agree with this mainly because most people have access to smart phones, tablets, ipods or games consoles and are lost if they go a whole day without interacting with these pieces of technology.

"The human ... invents himself in the technical by inventing the tool - by becoming exteriorised techno-logically" (Stiegler, 1998: 141)

I believe that technology is bound to have an everlasting effect on the media industry. Most media industries will benefit from the advances in technology. But the biggest benefit from the advancements will be in the New Media. This is already evident as we live in a culture were the masses are heavily obsessed with social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr and they are available from pretty much anywhere with a mobile phone. New Media provides us with content on demand because it is digitized.

Technology has had an everlasting effect on human lives and there is still a lot more to come. Although it would seem that humans heavily rely on technology to point were they wouldn't survive without it, this is not the case I believe. Humans rely on technology to get through the day but if it wasn't for humans hunger for the technology and consumption it provides in the New Media then there would be no strides taken for technology to progress forward.

Bibliography:

Shaw, D. 2008, Tecnnoculture: The Key Concepts, Oxford Berg Press

Technoculture: The Key Concepts - Shaw

All tasks that we currently perform can be technology related, putting aside the obvious example of me typing this blog on the internet we can look at our memories. It could be said that we now share our memories with technology, for example think of how many phone numbers you know off the top of your head. Our phone books on our mobile telephones now store all of our numbers, so there is no need to memorise them at all. How about when we go out somewhere, more people than ever takes photos on their phones and even share them via social networking with other friends. This could be said that technology is sharing your memory for you.
In their book Shaw states, "The concept of 'human' is unthinkable without technology but we act as if it is" (Shaw, 2008: pp.81). This is saying that culturally we have completely adapted to not even notice that technology helps us constantly, you could even say that we have assimilated technology into our bodies.

Technology has advanced to the stage that it can help us monitor out own bodies to try and maintain our health. If we look again at mobile phones, health apps like 'My Health Checker' remind you to weigh yourself, test your BMI and such while it draws up a graph to tell you how you are doing and what condition your body is in.
An interesting thought could be that the human body could not be explained without technology. During the book Shaw looks at William Harvey's findings of the circulatory system, there had to be a level of technology there for Harvey to explore the human body. From this it could then be said that the human body evolves as technology does, due to the fact that we cannot explore the human body anymore further until technology advances.

In a Marxists view of it, "The worker's body is a commodity to be bought and whose value is determined by the value of the market" (Shaw, 2008: pp.83). This suggests that we, like technology, are simply produced on a production line with no sense of awareness.
There are genuine fears of technology controlling us, we only have to look a film culturally to see our fears as a society. For example if we look at the films, 'The Terminator' (1984) and 'The Matrix' (1999) we can see two fictional societies that have been taken over by technology, machines run the world. If this fear does exist culturally, who is to say we won't end up on a production line.


Bibliography

Shaw, D. (2008) Technoculture: The Key Concepts (Oxford: Berg Press)