Wednesday, August 30, 2006
- ASsignment trial -
Just of warning, this is just my assignment, I'm trying to see if I can just copy and paste onto the blog 'cos thats what I gotta do for WOMN2205. Good to have a blog of my own...anyways, nothing to read unless your uber bored and also want to critically (ahem, and constructively) analyse this paper.
WOMN2205 – Critical Annotated Webliography
Guiding question: From Frankenstein to the Visible Human Project, the body is continually reinterpreted as a limit to what it means to be human.
Such a question, if it was to be answered, would contain a very long discussion, purely because of the vast field it covers. There are so many angles to look at whilst exploring the question that one could go beyond Frankenstein and the Visible Human Project (VHP). For instance, I would choose to include cyborgs in my discussion, purely because it is hard to analyse the notion of the interpretation of the body as a limit to humanness without divulging into all the other factors that determine what it means to be human. Because of the broadness of the topic does not mean I found it easy to recover relevant sources. There were a lot of sources that did not meet scholarly standards and many of which I found had to be discarded.
In Dr. Sam Vaknin’s review ‘On Being Human’, he covers plenty on the meaning of being human. He clearly defines what he means by ‘human’ before dwelling into his arguments. He lacks the in depth analysis of the human physical body, which could help answer the question; however I like that he explained what it means to be human in more of a behavioural manner. He points out the parallels of Frankenstein and androids, that they are both monster creations. Towards the end, he raises the issue about being human with the physical body. His point about mortality as the defining human characteristic can be argued to reinforce the point that the VHP does not allow a human being to be immortal. A representation of the body is vastly different to that of the continual existence of the body with a soul. Vaknin’s review could be used as the support for defining a human, although it is not quite a clear cut definition. Because it was a review, his reasons were straight to the point.
To explore into the depths of the VHP, Waldby’s paper is quite an analysis. Titled ‘Revenants: The Visible Human Project and the Digital Uncanny’, Waldby explores all aspects of the VHP which makes her paper very long and detailed. Not only does she make her points but provide opposing views that make her work a good source to use to answer the question. Particularly the point she makes about the VHP being ‘eternal incorruptible data’ but they are also merely body representations. Again, this piece of work parallels two bodily creations: Frankenstein (once again) and the VHP. The fact that they are both ‘put together’ by a ‘creator’ and exist between the lines of life and death. To this extent the point that she raises enforces the idea that maybe one of the limits to what it means to be human is that there is a fine line between life and death.
Robert W. Anderson delves into the aspect of what extent we can consider cyborgs human and how their bodies redefine our limits as a human being in his article, ‘Body Parts that Matter’. This is rather a feminist piece of work, so it is such a source that should be carefully examined to ensure the right information is extracted from the text. Similar to the other two online articles, Anderson also makes a comparison between two different (yet similar) creations which is Frankenstein and the cyborg. Rather than separating the two creatures in his analysis, he incorporates them together to try to gather a sense of similarity between Frankenstein and the cyborg and the blurring of the creations with that of ‘man’ and this indirectly questions are views on the ‘humanness’ of these creatures. Anderson also explores it the other way, suggesting that both creations do not depict what is human (physically) and hence this reinforces the subject of mortality which is our limit as human beings. His writings are quite long, and explore many other qualities of this topic, yet he makes a few brief points that demonstrate the concepts that can be explored in this essay.
An article by David Stonehouse refers to analysing our limits as a human and to the extent we can see the cyborg as pushing this limit further. This article is about the cyborg evolution that, according to Kevin Warwick, will inevitably take place. He is a case of the first ‘human cyborg’ whereby he had linked his nervous system to computers. The body being used this way is an instance of what the human body will become in the future. To be human is to be intellectual, and Warwick believes that in the near future we will be able to program intelligence into our systems. This article gives us the ability to somewhat counter-argue this limit that is placed on human beings, and through reinterpretation of the body ( ie, including the cyborg as an element of ‘human’) we can redefine humanness. Because this was an actual news article, it is formatted for easy reading hence it was not hard to select relevant points to utilise.
Seth Glick provided useful information to which helped to distinguish the cyborgs relationship to the human. He defines what a cyborg is and makes the claim that we are already being transformed into cyborgs in this era. This discussion of cyborgs further helps us to explore the extents of our humanness and also redefine our stereotypical views of what a cyborg is. His article makes that link between the body and ‘human’, how we have moved on from the VHP and onto a new interpretation of the human body. This is another news-like article that is written to inform more so than to critique notions of cyborgs and humans. Nevertheless it helps to explain and build on what we know of the question.
I think this just goes to show the amount of information that is available through the internet, and it is just looking at the right articles. However, it is the filtering process that comes across as hard, because the World Wide Web can hide a lot of what we call hard evidence. And it is just this that hinders the use of the internet to support underlying arguments within an essay.
WOMN2205 – Critical Annotated Webliography
Guiding question: From Frankenstein to the Visible Human Project, the body is continually reinterpreted as a limit to what it means to be human.
Such a question, if it was to be answered, would contain a very long discussion, purely because of the vast field it covers. There are so many angles to look at whilst exploring the question that one could go beyond Frankenstein and the Visible Human Project (VHP). For instance, I would choose to include cyborgs in my discussion, purely because it is hard to analyse the notion of the interpretation of the body as a limit to humanness without divulging into all the other factors that determine what it means to be human. Because of the broadness of the topic does not mean I found it easy to recover relevant sources. There were a lot of sources that did not meet scholarly standards and many of which I found had to be discarded.
In Dr. Sam Vaknin’s review ‘On Being Human’, he covers plenty on the meaning of being human. He clearly defines what he means by ‘human’ before dwelling into his arguments. He lacks the in depth analysis of the human physical body, which could help answer the question; however I like that he explained what it means to be human in more of a behavioural manner. He points out the parallels of Frankenstein and androids, that they are both monster creations. Towards the end, he raises the issue about being human with the physical body. His point about mortality as the defining human characteristic can be argued to reinforce the point that the VHP does not allow a human being to be immortal. A representation of the body is vastly different to that of the continual existence of the body with a soul. Vaknin’s review could be used as the support for defining a human, although it is not quite a clear cut definition. Because it was a review, his reasons were straight to the point.
To explore into the depths of the VHP, Waldby’s paper is quite an analysis. Titled ‘Revenants: The Visible Human Project and the Digital Uncanny’, Waldby explores all aspects of the VHP which makes her paper very long and detailed. Not only does she make her points but provide opposing views that make her work a good source to use to answer the question. Particularly the point she makes about the VHP being ‘eternal incorruptible data’ but they are also merely body representations. Again, this piece of work parallels two bodily creations: Frankenstein (once again) and the VHP. The fact that they are both ‘put together’ by a ‘creator’ and exist between the lines of life and death. To this extent the point that she raises enforces the idea that maybe one of the limits to what it means to be human is that there is a fine line between life and death.
Robert W. Anderson delves into the aspect of what extent we can consider cyborgs human and how their bodies redefine our limits as a human being in his article, ‘Body Parts that Matter’. This is rather a feminist piece of work, so it is such a source that should be carefully examined to ensure the right information is extracted from the text. Similar to the other two online articles, Anderson also makes a comparison between two different (yet similar) creations which is Frankenstein and the cyborg. Rather than separating the two creatures in his analysis, he incorporates them together to try to gather a sense of similarity between Frankenstein and the cyborg and the blurring of the creations with that of ‘man’ and this indirectly questions are views on the ‘humanness’ of these creatures. Anderson also explores it the other way, suggesting that both creations do not depict what is human (physically) and hence this reinforces the subject of mortality which is our limit as human beings. His writings are quite long, and explore many other qualities of this topic, yet he makes a few brief points that demonstrate the concepts that can be explored in this essay.
An article by David Stonehouse refers to analysing our limits as a human and to the extent we can see the cyborg as pushing this limit further. This article is about the cyborg evolution that, according to Kevin Warwick, will inevitably take place. He is a case of the first ‘human cyborg’ whereby he had linked his nervous system to computers. The body being used this way is an instance of what the human body will become in the future. To be human is to be intellectual, and Warwick believes that in the near future we will be able to program intelligence into our systems. This article gives us the ability to somewhat counter-argue this limit that is placed on human beings, and through reinterpretation of the body ( ie, including the cyborg as an element of ‘human’) we can redefine humanness. Because this was an actual news article, it is formatted for easy reading hence it was not hard to select relevant points to utilise.
Seth Glick provided useful information to which helped to distinguish the cyborgs relationship to the human. He defines what a cyborg is and makes the claim that we are already being transformed into cyborgs in this era. This discussion of cyborgs further helps us to explore the extents of our humanness and also redefine our stereotypical views of what a cyborg is. His article makes that link between the body and ‘human’, how we have moved on from the VHP and onto a new interpretation of the human body. This is another news-like article that is written to inform more so than to critique notions of cyborgs and humans. Nevertheless it helps to explain and build on what we know of the question.
I think this just goes to show the amount of information that is available through the internet, and it is just looking at the right articles. However, it is the filtering process that comes across as hard, because the World Wide Web can hide a lot of what we call hard evidence. And it is just this that hinders the use of the internet to support underlying arguments within an essay.
-{ missing you 8/30/2006 12:15:00 pm }-