"From all work to all play"-the consequences of a society structured around technology

Sadie Plant points out in her essay that throughout history, women have been given jobs that are characterized as “menial, minor, secondary”, which in some cases, as with the loom and computer programming, have turned out to be quite the opposite (264). As Plant argues, historically, patriarchy has disregarded women’s work simply because it is done by a woman, and neglected the importance that such work has had on developing culture and society. In regards to the question, “How might the new media world have looked different had women, and particularly feminist women writers, been more prominent in theorizing the future during the decades of the 70s, 80s, and 90s?”, I think it is safe to say that their outlook about growing technology would be bad. The move towards technological innovation is making the world evolve at a faster rate, while humanity stays behind and relishes in its achievement of creating a hypothetical “better world”. As Haraway states, “we are living through a movement from an organic, industrial society to a polymorphous, information system – from all work to all play, a deadly game” (161). This is “a deadly game” because of the advent of what Haraway calls “cyborgs”, which in my mind would be human-like slaves to society. She argues in her piece that, “The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential” (151). Haraway is expressing here a fear of the “offspring” created by a military, patriarchal, and capitalist society, that historically has treated women as second-class citizens, but she is hopeful that the cyborgs will rebel against that particular aspect of the society that has created them. The machines and technology are everyday growing stronger, better, faster, while humanity is blasé, treating the advancements as opportunistic and helpful. What Sherry Turkle talks about in her essay is just that – a move from activity to passivity with the help of computers and “virtuality”. She states that this change is causing a “devaluation of direct experience” (Turkle 237). With the creation of virtual worlds and a separation from RL (real life), Turkle asks, “Instead of solving real problems—both personal and social—are we choosing to live in unreal places?” (244). It seems that the more technology advances, the more people want to live within it – whether it’s through a Facebook page or an MUD – and that’s frightening. As leisure time becomes increasingly spent in front of a computer or television being entertained and less time exploring the world and its issues, who will be around to argue for social and political change?

Cybernetics and Becoming Posthuman

Cybernetics, a theory that both Hayles and Turner touch on, can be defined in many different ways, but as I understand it, in cybernetics, a system’s changes affect its behavior. If we think of society as a system that runs on technological information and innovation as well as culture, then it can be seen as cybernetic. As breakthroughs are made in technologies that allow information to travel readily from one source to another, the system must change to accommodate the cultural and social implications that accompany this change. An example of this is the growing availability of the internet. Knowledge has begun to change due to the ability of a person to quickly access information in the thousands by using a simple search engine like Google. Thus, it can be said that the changes in the world directly affect developments in knowledge, technology, and society, but at the same time recreate the world by moving it in a new direction of development. Turner acknowledges this when he says that, “Networked forms of commerce, and the integration of information technologies into them, quickly began to seem like stages in a natural, rather than a socio-technical, progression. Suddenly mankind ha[s] entered a new stage of evolution: the scientists of the artificial-life movement, wrote [Kevin] Kelly, ha[ve] already shown that ‘evolution is not a biological process. It is a technological, mathematical, informational, and biological process rolled into one’” (203). Humanity is constantly evolving, and as Hayles points out, this is how we are becoming posthuman—individuals change with the system as well. A posthuman understands the world from multiple perspectives, and is willing to change perspectives. Hayles uses a sort-of Darwinian interpretation of how humans can become or are posthuman in this sense, when she says that, “Organisms respond to their environment in ways determined by their internal self-organization. Their one and only goal is continually to produce and reproduce the organization that defines them as systems. Hence, they are not only self-organizing but are also autopoietic, or self-making” (10). Therefore, not only can we adapt to a changing society by changing ourselves, we can change society so it will adapt to our changing knowledge and culture.

Hayek

Hayek claims that “By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable” (82-3). He contrasts this idea with that of the Rule of Law, which “implies limits to the scope of legislation: it restricts it to the kind of general rules known as formal law and excludes legislation either directly aimed at particular people or at enabling anybody to use the coercive power of the state for the purpose of such discrimination” (83). So, it appears that Hayek believes the government should be regulated by the Rule of Law, which protects the people because it never changes, the rules which are set out in it are “fixed” (72). Without a commitment to maintaining the Rule of Law, a government can create arbitrary laws whenever it sees fit, and this has the definite possibility of leading to public unrest. It’s hard to say where the US democracy falls in with Hayek’s philosophy. It’s been a while since I took government in high school, but it’s my general understanding that the government cannot just make and implement laws without a vote of the people—that’s pretty central to democracy. To do away with the Rule of Law, in my opinion, would be to do away with democracy, a government that is centered on the people. The scary thing about this argument that Hayek makes, however, is that the decline of the Rule of Law can be readily applied to the political situation in Germany when Hitler took over, which allowed him easy access to creating a totalitarian government.

I think the more exciting part of the Hayek reading was on economic control leading to totalitarianism. His theory that centralized control of the economy can lead to control in every aspect of an individual’s life is really interesting. Society is already set in a pattern of consumption, and big corporations already decide what it is that is consumed. The government plays a role in regulating what is consumed through agencies like the FDA, which looks out for the health of the people. The idea that if the government controls economic activities it will then be able to decide for us what is necessary is a crazy idea, but Hayek’s argument is surprisingly good.