In what ways have our relations to machines been theorized?
1. Campbell, Norah, Aidan O Driscoll and Michael Saren. “Cyborg Consciousness: A Visual Culture Approach to the Technologised Body.” European Advances in Consumer Research 7 (2006). http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/eacr/vol7/EuropeanVolume7_111.pdf (accessed 15 March 2011)
Adopting a critical visual culture approach to the images, this research aims to debate “[…] how technology can create liminal zones in and around the visual body”, under the environment of marketing communications. In short, it examines how human body is able to be visually reimagined, represented and reconstructed via the technology in advertising.
Separately clarifying the definitions and characteristics of Body and Machine, the idea of Posthumanism is proposed which is “[…] a radical breaking off from, and reconceptualisation of, the state of being human”, since the technology as a poststructural force invades the body during a postmodern and technological age. Cyborg, as a term of cyborgism – describing a dynamic human-machine relationship, is an imagined body combining with the components of organic and technical. Meanwhile, cyborg theory has collapsed the duality: Nature versus Culture.
Using Nike Les Jumelles as one of the selected samplings, the research not only exemplifies the imagination of our future body, but also emphasizes the cyborgian issues such as a blurred distinction between virtuality and reality, gender empowerment and female objectification. The scenes of All is full of love and Transformer are also utilized for further elaborations of future opaque sexual relations and mechanical viscerality.
2. Buchanan-Oliver, Margo and Angela Cruz. “The Body and Technology: Discourses Shaping Consumer Experience and Marketing.” Advances in Customer Research 36 (2009). http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/v36/NAACR_vol36_23.pdf (accessed 15 March 2011)
A methodology of theoretical discourse analysis is acquired to summarize the discussions on the theorisations of body-machine liminality, a dialectic between control and freedom, consumers’ embodied interaction with technology, and the body as a site for the (re)production of identity. The research argues that how consumers understand and experience technological-based products and services, in the fields of popular culture and marketing communications, shape views of body and technology.
The boundaries between body and technology are obviously breaking down because of the ubiquity of machines and diversification of consumer-machine interactions. The body-machine liminality describes a hybridity that is “[…] being simultaneously human and machine, and neither human nor machine”.
Human – a nature-born cyborg – utilizes “[…] technology in such a way that it becomes transparent in use and inseparable from our bodies to extend our sense of presence and our potential for action”. Meanwhile, individual and communal bodies can be viewed as masters or slaves of technology. The notion of posthuman consumer culture brings out a fundamental question about human identity in an environment saturated with technology – what it means to be and to have a body.
3. Mazis, A. Glen. “Cyborg Life: The In-between of Humans and Machines.” PhaenEx 3.2 (2008): 14-36. http://www.phaenex.uwindsor.ca/ojs/leddy/index.php/phaenex/article/viewFile/567/558 (accessed 13 March 2011)
The objective of this article is to present a “[…] doubly in-between relatedness of humans and machines: human/machine cyborg beings”. The term of in-between includes two senses: one is how human and machine share their functioning to constitute their in-between space; while the second one is how human and machine work through each other to construct their identities of cyborg being.
Therefore, cyborg, the term frequently used for viewing human/machine in-between, also implies two definitions. The conventional one, referring to the first sense of in-between, considers a real cyborg which is constructed under “[…] the case of organic beings who are physically and functionally united with mechanized beings”.
On the other hand, everyone is defined as a cyborg – people become “[…] enfolded within a world in which machines not only perform many of our key actions but also make possible how we know ourselves, express ourselves, modify our intentions, and open new avenues for who we might become”. It is because the machine intimately joins with the body in a technological society. Chorost’s viewpoint is quoted for explanation that our “[…] bodily functioning and experience will be dictated by a machine” – a restructure of the relationship with the body.
4. Wainer, Joshua, David J. Feil-Seifer, Dylan A. Shell and Maja J. Mataric. “The Role of Physical Embodiment in Human-Robot Interaction.” University of Southern California. http://cres.usc.edu/pubdb_html/files_upload/498.pdf (accessed 14 March 2011)
The researchers adopt an observational experiment targeted the reciprocation among human and robots, in order to investigate whether “[…] robots are to become part of people’s everyday lives”, since the sociability of autonomous robots is highly concerned in a developing human-robot interaction community. Task performance, enjoyment and perceived social awareness with eleven human participants by three different kinds of moderators: a co-located physical robot, a remotely located physical robot and a simulated robot, are measured. The formal hypothesis assumes that physical embodiment become a significantly influential factor towards the evaluations of performance and perception of social interactions. At last, physically embodied robots will be supposed to have higher social awareness and elicit longer interaction than virtual robots.
Consequently, the finding certifies physical embodiment plays an essential role in social tasks, and contains an “[…] effect on the perception of robot’s social situatedness”. According to the result, the participants’ face-to-face interaction with co-located physical robot was highly ranked by the comments “I enjoyed the most” and “Watched me the most closely”, compared with two other robots. However, the actual time users spent on each moderator just involved a pretty minor difference. In other words, human feels comfortable to interact with physically embodied robots but simultaneously treats them as simple robots only.
5. Brady, A. Jill. “Human-Robot Relationships: The Future of Full-Functionality.” University of California. http://alumni.cs.ucr.edu/~bradyj/HRR.pdf (accessed 13 March 2011)
The purpose of this article is to analyze the social function of robots in our society as they closely engage in our contemporary daily life, and start to blur the line between human and robot. Personal robots are divided into three categories: tools, service-provider and companion. When robots are used as tools, human would not consider their interaction with such robots as relationship. Similarly, when robots function as service-provider, human also just view them as an un-empathetic and emotionally unaware machine even though they have a shallow relationship. Contrarily, a genuine human-robot relationship will be built up if robots were companion robots, which are “[…] robots that have an intrinsic notion of sociality, that develop social skills and bond with people, and that can show empathy and true understanding”.
The emotional robotic communication is appreciated as it enhances human comprehension, achieves people’s expectation on certain behaviors, and maintains closely mimic social interactions with which we are familiar. At last, such personality and emotion will establish an effective, dynamic and “actual” human-robot relationship - “[…] we will have a future of full-functionality, of genuine relationships with synthetic humans”.
On the other hand, using the movies such as The 6th Day and AI to exemplify that all robots can have sexual purpose, human can yield sexual gratification and superficial pleasantries from robots, especially from the companion robots which have emotional cognitive. However, human actually has no emotional relationship, conveniently and emotional commitment towards such sexualized robots.
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