If its true that we're a brain in a vat, and everything that exist is only a fake representation created from so called 'who?', thus we're no longer can rely on our senses. But when more or less the same argument produced in the Visual communication class where we are no longer can rely on our senses - it provides me with an acceptable argument where without technologies or aids such as transportation vehicle, spectacles for those who has sight problems, shoes for all of us to walk with then we are through. Then it seems to me that we are no longer can rely on our body senses.
Its a tough argument though but when Chris asked me "are you a cyborgs?", my mind start answering strictly "No, i'm not". and here comes the new argument. How can we be consider as a cyborg? what makes you a cyborg?
"By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organisms; in short, we are cyborgs. This cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborgs is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centers structuring any possibility of historical transformation" (Haraway, 1991)
In this case we are cyborgs in the 'Cyberspace' through the communication like Internet which later provide a new identities for us to enter a new different world from reality but at the same time we are able to communicate with people from different places who also has the same identities created by us. As stated in the 'Cyberculture Readers' books:
"Cyberspace: A new universe, a parallel universe created and sustained by the world's computer and communication lines. A world in which the global traffic of knowledge, secrets, measurements, indicators, entertainments, and alter-human agency takes on form: sights, sounds, presences never seen on the surface of the earth blossoming in a vast electronic light"
Games nowadays has improved to a great level where we can have our own visual identities (cyborgian identities) which exist in the visual world but controlled by us in the real world. Games such as Modern Warfare, Sims and World of Warcraft has become a big entertainment to the public especially for 'gamers'. Below is the pictures of the 'gamers' which participate in war craft competition which shows that people nowadays are 'cyborgs' and other video games who also a representation of ourselves.
-Modern Warfare
The Sims
Simulacrum is a post-modern condition which also means something that replace reality with its representation. Thus cyborgs live in a simulacrum which have their different identities from the reality. A good example for cyborg identities who live in a simulacrum is 'Avatar'. The real world are separated from the real world where they use cables in order to transform them into an Avatar member of the simulacrum world.
For the conclusion, we are cyborgs depends on the identities that we created. Not all human are cyborgs nowadays but for those who have 'facebook' or 'myspace' or gamers who literally have a representation of themselves to communicate with other people through visual world - then those people could still categorized as 'cyborgs' in the form of community as stated by Rheingold:
"Visual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feelings, to form webs of relationships in cyberspace" (Rheingold) - cited from the cyberculture reader by Bell, D.
REFERENCE:
- Bell, D. and Kennedy, B.M, (2000), Cyberculture Reader, London: Routledge
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