Hyperlink Report: McLuhan
Three main concepts—“the body, materiality, and the cyborg”—share certain features and conceptions, and are closely linked together. First of all, in my own opinion, the body and materiality are basically representing the same ideas. Both the body and materiality are burdens to “disembodiment” with their physical-attributed characteristics.
Mind and body, in fact, can be rather presented as imagination and materiality. Both the body and materiality are social and cultural products and symbols of authority and identity. The term body is often associated with feminism because females tend to carry more bodily characteristics—especially those related to biological reproduction, such as menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth, than males. The body, in fact, carries potential to transcend limitations related to sexuality, gender, race, and class. Combined with technology, the body becomes post-human body and become liberated from boundaries of sexuality and gender.
McLuhan’s concept of human extension continues to apply to that of the cyborg. In fact, the cyborg represents human extended with cybernetic extensions. The cyborg is a hybrid of the body and materiality, and a product of both social reality and fiction. The cyborg represents both a socio-political symbol and a new challenge brought directly to sense of human being in the modern high-technology society with diminishing boundaries. The cyborg is neither unisexual nor bisexual. Also, because it is not even asexual, the cyborg allows its body to be free from sexuality-and-gender-related boundaries. The cyborg is both human and machine; and materialistic and non-materialistic.
The whole concept of the cyborg presents a glimmer of hope for feminists. However, in reality, we are still not liberated from bodily aspects—especially gender and sexuality—even with all the high-technological innovations in our lives. I acknowledge that the cyberspace enabled non-bodily experience in the modern society. However, most technologies are still heavily gendered and almost all fields of science are male-centered or even male-dominated. For example, there is distinct difference in male and female preference for technological interfaces such as mobile phones. In addition, innovations in cosmetic technology allowed female to be even more female, or “gendered” with a plastic surgery, for example. Sexuality also tends to be exaggerated in the cyberspace like Internet. These examples from our daily lives show how the concept of the cyborg is presented and applied in today’s society, although we the cyborgs are still not completely liberated from the diminishing boundaries.
