Blog Reflection

I liked the idea of a blog as a teaching tool, it was part of what made me choose this unit. However, I have to say I was a little underwhelmed at the actual execution of it. I loved reading people's posts, I followed the links (and have bookmarked a couple for further interest!), but I guess I'm used to a blog with comments being a lively, engaged, evolving forum of personalities. I would have loved to see more interactions via comments, and I would have loved to see more random, just-because posts. I guess I am to blame for this as much as anyone, because I sat back and kind of waited for it to be this way so I could join in; in practice if everyone does this it doesn't happen, duh. I also had some technical issues where the page wasn't loading properly for me, the posts weren't previewing the way I expected, or my writing wasn't showing up (Probably a PEBKAC). It's hard to establish technology as a mainstream teaching medium where it has the potential to be unreliable. In summary, I still love the idea, I think that like any new form of teaching or communication tool it takes some getting used to before comfortable familiarity with the medium is achieved.

Am I a cyborg? Well, I have grown up immersed in science fiction, and surrounded myself with people who revel in "speculative fabulations". In short, I'm pretty nerdy and this nerdiness has formulated an understanding of cyborgs that is kind of at odds with Haraway's postulations. I don't see cyberspace having freed us from our bodies or significantly rewritten social rules. I see the digital technology we have now as the result of a series of logical, believable, microevolutionary steps, beginning when some ancient ancestor first used a tool and then told another person about it. These things have shaped human beings along the way, but no one of them has made us a new species by itself. Did we become cyborgs when the telescope was invented, or did we earthbound beings merely use all our understanding built up to that moment to interpret the fact that there was more out there? Society adapted in some ways because of that, and some old assumptions had to change, but much more stayed the same. Digital stuff is just another instance like that. In my humble opinion ;)

I'm tempted to define the cyborg as those people (animals?) who are fused in a more permanent way with artificial enhancement, not just because they use the internet or a mobile phone. In this way I probably am a cyborg because I am asthmatic and rely on a culmination of medical research to keep me alive, but I feel a tad ripped off because I don't have metal bits or lasers. I guess that's what you get for being drawn into romantic notions rather than mundane facts. In conclusion, any definition is problematic, and reading all the material in this unit is enough to make me question what I thought I knew and desire to read more before definitively applying it to myself.