I took Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto as a deep dive into cyborg functionality and the cybernetic world. On page 3, it states, “The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal, symbiosis, unalienated labor, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity.” Haraway goes into the concepts of gender, sexuality, machine and idealism, and political and cultural aspects. Since cyborgs are a combination of natural and man-made I think this reading talks about the impact on social reality since there is no identity. That is what I am getting from it at least since there are also mentions of feminism which relates to identity which the idea of cyborgs challenges. Although I had a hard time grasping the text, I still enjoyed the reading very much since I am also fascinated with the idea of cyborgs.
Turkle’s Video Games and Computer Holding Powers goes into the power of video games which I had a great time reading since I enjoy video games myself and I have been playing since I was a little kid and my family is also involved with video games themselves. Turkle goes into the mechanics starting from the pinball machine and into computer cultures and the timeline of video games. Something that stuck out to me was a quote on page 10, from Losing Onesef in a Simulated World, it states in the first sentence, “If there is danger here, it is not the danger of mindless play but of the infatuation with the challenge of simulated worlds.” Which tackles people and how they tackle the real and artificial worlds. When it comes to MMORPG OR MMO it is hard to lose yourself in the addiction to these universes compared to your reality since you can control what happens in your simulated world through your creativity. Turkle talks more about how much this impacts people’s involvement in the real world because they can easily lose themselves in the simulated one. I can relate to this because I play a game called The Sims and I can create my own family, neighbors, neighborhood, and town the ability to control these things can cause me to lose the concept of time since I begin to hyper fixate on the ability to have “god-like” controls in the game. Of course, reality can suck sometimes so to get away and dive into a simulated world can be nice but also damaging to oneself.
Hey Ashiley,
I didn’t really relate to Turkle’s piece until you bought up The Sims. Even though I don’t play too often, when I do it’s almost like binging. Also, getting frustrated when something unexpected happens, because I feel like I am supposed to have complete control. It’s a weirdly addicting game and a perfect example for Turkle’s point that we tend to get lost in simulated worlds.