Joey's reflection post

Do I regard myself as a cyborg?
In the past, “cyborg” means robot in my dictionary, something part human part machine, characters that we can find in the science fiction. However, I get a totally different concept and meaning of this word after studying this unit. Although, I am a human with with flesh and blood for no doubt, I actually am a cyborg, and I guess everyone around is all cyborg. Nowadays, to survive in this scientific and technological world, we all have no choice but to become a cyborg starting from our childhood days when we started to learn. Things that we use and things that surround us are all most likely related to technology, telephones that we use to connect and communicate with others, computers that we use to let information in and out, and digital devices like Ipod which kids and adults are nearly addicted to, I can say that these are all things we can’t live without with. Like the last discussion we had on the topic post-human, boundary between human and technology, technology is already part of our lives, part of us. Technology doesn’t take place only in reality, it occurs in our mind. Just take myself as an example, every morning when I wake up, whenever I have free time or even I don’t, I will automatically switch on my computer and go online check my facebook account, I am so addicted to facebook and it’s my most preferred medium of communication to others. And after checking facebook I would sign in to my MSN account and check my emails and news and stuff. Everything is just so perfectly natural, and if anyone out there happened know not how to use one of those digital stuffs I have mentioned, he/she would be considered as weird or even abnormal in this digital age. So, I am a cyborg, I accept technological progress but I would allow myself to be over relied on it.

Generally about the unit
Honestly, I don’t have much good feelings on this subject at the first place, I don’t really care about what cyborg is and to me it is sort of troublesome to post comments and evaluations online time to time. However, unexpectedly I found the topic actually can be quite interesting, presentations and discussions we had in the tutorial classes inspired me as well. Every week, after we have certain understanding of that week topic in lecture, classmates take turn to present us a very thorough presentation in tutorial lesson. The discussions in class is really an excellent platform for us to express our thoughts and somehow once or twice I expressed my opinion in class which I rarely do so in the past. The atmosphere of learning is really important and I have to say that asking students to comment or post evaluation online is quite effective in order to make student like me to be more into the unit. And about the unit, I think it covers really well on a wide aspect and motivates me to think deeply in the relation or connection between human and technology. I’ve especially learnt a lot more on values and privacy, and I think under this digital age, I will keep exploring on this topic in my daily life.