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)