12 April 2010
![](http://cdn08.dayviews.com/cdn/img/v4/Dagstexter_pil.png)
Research Methodologies
Jag och Sofie sitter i skolan och försöker jobba. Det verkar gå ganska bra för henne medan jag mest surfar omkring. (I alla fall ser hon upptagen ut med sin bok, där hon sitter och är söt i solljuset.)
Än så länge har jag bara läst igenom vad jag har skrivit att jag ska skriva om, (Uhurhurhur, så rolig man kan vara.) men har också lyckats läsa igenom två artiklar som jag tänkte att jag skulle använda. Den ena av dem är underbart underhållande.
Det är i alla fall dags att skärpa sig nu, med skolan och med resten av livet. Träning, sund kost och pluggande blir det fram till sommaren, minsann! Överväger också om jag skulle hoppa på Lwordish armhävningsträning, men det känns lite för överambitiöst än så länge.
Course Name: Research Methodologies I
Student Name: Petra Horning (Ja, det är jag alltså, Petra Horning)
Proposal/Project Title: the Road from Mechanic to Organic – a critical comparison between androids, cyborgs and avatars in books and movies.
Key Terms/Concepts
Android, avatar, cyborg, embodiment, identity, organic vs. mechanic, virtual space
Context
In the late 1950s the world’s first cyborg made its appearance at New York’s Rockland State Hospital; a white laboratory rat with a tiny osmotic pump implanted in its body that injected chemicals to alter several of its psychological parameters. It was part animal, part machine. Since then authors of contemporary fiction have readily implemented fictionalized accounts of such hybrid figures in their works, such as Philip K. Dick’s “the mood organ" in his novel Do androids dream of electric sheep?
He also introduced the androids, creations that are “more human than human" according to their creator Tyrell in the film adaptation Blade Runner. In her essay The Life Cycle of Cyborgs: Writing the Posthuman, Katherine Hayles argues that the making of cyborgs comes into conflict with the understanding of the human life cycle because of the machines’ capabilities of assembly and disassembly, and further states that like Frankenstein’s monster “a creature who has never known what it is like to be a child, remains alien despite his humanoid form," the cyborgs are monstrous because they have not grown but instead been created as perfect as they can be right from the start, sidestepping the reproductive phase and thus the experience of mortality.
With the development of the internet the split between human and technology, organic and machine, became more pronounced as more and more people lost themselves in the virtual landscape created on-line. These alternative personas helps absolve the user of some of the responsibilities of “acting human," as a user of one of these virtual worlds says in T. L. Taylor’s essay Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Worlds, and we have moved from despising technology to embracing it.
Statement of Research Objectives
By using Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and James Cameron’s Avatar, I intend to map out our progress from the dystopian android to the utopian avatar, a transition from the mechanical to the organic and onwards within the virtual space that is named Pandora.
I will reflect on how our attitude has changed from the postmodern fear of technology to a glorified yearning for a new, otherworldly identity. I will take a closer look at the scenario Cameron presents us with in Avatar and determine if it is something new or in fact only a reiteration of Haraway’s visions of cyberspace, as a place where gender does not matter and everyone will all be able to coexist in an equal state of disembodiment.
I will address the following questions within my research:
- What is the difference between androids, cyborgs and avatars?
To be able to show the progress from android to avatar I must first define the differences and similarities between them.
- I will question whether the androids in Blade Runner and the avatars in Avatar both represent the human’s fear of death, or a longing to be something other than human.
In an attempt to understand our fascination with these different creations, we must first understand what they signify.
- How are the notions of identity and embodiment being challenged and reinvented in Avatar?
A highly valid research point, since Avatar has transformed the dehumanizing fear of technology into a utopian dreamscape.
- If it is the hardships we endure that shape who we become and makes us grow, what will happen when we are presented with the easy option, as Jake Sully in Avatar, to leave our old body behind when it no longer can satisfy our needs and move on to a new one?
A danger with presenting this lucid dreaming state of being and a danger that I will address in relationship to the glorified utopia viewers encounter in Avatar.
Conclusion
It is a fact that Philip K. Dick wanted to warn us about the androids and the cyborgs, and the direction that our technological development was taking us at the time when he wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The fear he, and others, induced in us may seem overstated and narrow-minded in this age were everyone owns a multitude of technological gadgets we could probably do without.
This is even truer when compared to Avatar, which presents us with a fantastic opportunity to trade our daily drudgery for an eternity of harmonic freedom. What should not be forgotten though is the road to that freedom, for it would not be possible for Jake Sully to make the transition from human to avatar without the help of the technology that created “his" avatar or brought him to Pandora in to begin with.
We should not fear technology, but still be careful so that we won’t wake up one day and realize that we were so engrossed in our virtual worlds that we forgot to live our lives.
Direct link:
http://dayviews.com/danyael/2010/4/12/