19 Oct 2010

Making reference predominantly to texts we have studied on the module, consider, in essay form, the relations between ‘technology’ and one or more of the following: Art (including literature); the individual; the environment; thought; society; morality; reality; creativity; sexuality; history.


my essay...

The Neuromancer was published in 1984 and established William Gibson as a leading novelist in the field of the science-fiction genre. In this essay we will focus primarily upon the relationships between technology and the individual. Also, how technology affects upon the relationships of characters within the novel. This focus will lead to close analysis upon the protagonist of Case and another major character of the novel, Molly. To establish the relationships that exist between themselves and the technology represented in the novel we will refer predominantly to the work of Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto and to the work of Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology. Their work will enable us to extract key moments within the narrative that allows the text to reveal the relations between technology and the individual. Observation of the characters will reveal them to function as Haraway’s cyborg. Also, we will observe how the cyborg is able to break through the supposed borders of nature and machine. This will show why the machine can be viewed as ultimately the embodiment of ‘us’. Furthermore, in establishing the role of the cyborg within the text we shall investigate the impact the cyborg has upon the narrative of the novel. This will concern us mainly with the affect the role of the technology has upon the relationship of our two main characters. This includes focus on sections of the text where the protagonist seeks toward the role of cyborg.
Firstly let us pay attention to the work of Donna Haraway and her work A Cyborg Manifesto.  Let us observe how her work reveals an understanding of how technology affects the individual within a relationship in the The Neuromancer.  When reading the relationship between Case and Molly let us consider Haraway’s work. She has this to say, ‘In relation to objects like biotic components, one must think not in terms of essential properties, but in terms of design boundary constraints, rates of flows, system logics, cost of lowering constraints.’[i] In Comparison with the characters of Case and Molly, we can see how they smash through the constraints cited here in the meditations of Haraway. The disregard Case and Molly have for themselves as ‘essential properties’ is displayed in their attitudes toward their own body and mind. Observing the text when Case becomes ‘the passenger behind her eyes’, through access of the matrix,[ii] a remote fusion with Molly enables Case to connect to a visual link enabling access through the eyes of Molly. It is interesting to note that Case displays no fear when, ‘He began to find the passivity of the situation irritating.’[iii] And his only problem we read here, ‘Her body language was disorientating, her style foreign.’[iv] Getting acquainted with an alien situation appears to be his major concern.  This lack of fear in the language portrays Case as needing to be proactive and working. He is in need of using his skills in the situation which appropriates his attitude of feeling comfortable within the sphere of boundless technology.
The essential properties of the ‘biotic’ and ‘the natural’ are challenged and technology manifests within the crossing of design boundary constraints. Both Molly and Case appear to be without a moralistic standpoint and seem to have no concept of the invasive qualities associated with trying to enter the mind of another individual. Case tells the reader ‘her being, like his, was the thing she did to make a living.’[v] Again we have this reference to work and being. The bodies the characters inhabit and traverse using their minds and the technology of cyberspace breaks down the idea of inaccessibility. This in turn, leads to an eradication of borders which seemingly exist between the human and the machine. The technological society in which they navigate appropriates the two characters to adopt, or discard, a certain view of morality in order to successfully function, and to collaborate with technology to survive as a cyborg.
Haraway continues her expression of the cyborg and its position in a world, ‘Any object or persons can be reasonably thought of in terms of disassembly and reassembly; no “natural” architectures constrain system design.’[vi] Applied to the context of The Neuromancer Haraway’s work speaks of the realm of natural constrains of architecture of which Case and Molly function across. The architecture of nature and man are there to be integrated by technology to produce the role of the cyborg. To continue, in their first meeting Molly comes to capture Case where he observes that, Molly’s glasses are ‘…surgically inset…The silver lenses seemed to grow from smooth pale skin above her cheekbones…’[vii]  Case is no competition for her skills in fighting, Molly warns him, ‘you look like you like to take stupid chances.’[viii], that he should not think of escaping. Molly acts with a display of power, ‘…with barely an audible click, ten double-edged, four-centimeter scalpel blades slid from their housings beneath the burgundy nails.’[ix] There is a fusion between Molly and ‘machine’ of which Haraway would state, ‘The machine is not an it to be animated, the machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment.’[x]  The configuration of the machine by technology is incorporated into Molly’s being and we will witness how this affects her character’s status and behaviour in relation to Case. Haraway says, ‘No objects, spaces, or bodies are sacred in themselves; any component can be interfaced with any other, if the proper standard, the proper code, can be constructed for processing signals in a common language.’[xi] In relation to the latter technological functions and with the blades implanted into the fingers of Molly we can observe that the natural realm of the body is interfaced with the technology that exists in the world of The Neuromancer. The ‘proper code’ has been established through techniques of miniaturisation of electronics, combined with biology that is practiced in the clinics of Chiba. Haraway says; ‘Communication sciences and biology are constructions of natural-technical objects of knowledge in which the difference between machine and organism is thoroughly blurred; mind, body, and tool are on very intimate terms.’[xii] We can witness a part the environment plays to accommodate this theory of blurring. In New York, Case observes the ‘Freak winds in the East-side; something to do with convection, an overlap in the domes.’[xiii] Technology has amalgamated with the environment to construe possibilities of influence. Upon entering a secret laboratory through a corridor of strewn with disused junk Case observes its behaviour, ‘The junk looked like something that had grown their, a fungus of twisted metal and plastic…the guts of a television…’[xiv] His language conveys sentiments of the agricultural and biological processes of decomposition.  The man made substances of plastic, glass and metal are illustrated as a fungus in order to establish them a life force. Here we can understand how the processes of nature and technology are intertwined on the microscopic biological level to inhabit and become the environment. Within the collaboration of these disciplines and the body we can form the understanding that technology, the characters way of being, the way they behave, strive towards surviving within a technologically influenced environment.
The intimate terms that exist between mind, body, and tool, working together to create the guise of Molly as a femme fatale of the cyborg are according to Heidegger ‘technology’ itself. In The Question Concerning Technology Heidegger explains, ‘it reveals whatever does not bring itself forth and does not lie here before us…Thus what is decisive in techne does not lie at all in the making and manipulating nor in the using of its means, but rather in the aforementioned revealing and not as manufacturing, that techne is a bringing forth.’[xv] In relating this thinking to Molly she would cease to exist as the character Molly is without the necessary integration that she shares with the technology in The Neuromancer. What we can begin to understand is that the fusion of the ‘biotic’ with ‘nature’  goes to the ‘revealing’ of a Molly as ‘technology’ and so, she finds it a necessity to adopt the conditions of Haraway’s cyborg.
In relating this argument to the scene of Molly’s introduction and departure from her working relationship with Case a dynamic is created between them. We are given variation in their behaviour towards each other that can also offer technology as a mediator, or centre for the characters behaviour to revolve. Firstly, there is the repetition of acceptance within the dialogue from Molly that alludes to a capitulation of control through how she is, ‘wired’, which in turn, enables her to operate as a cyborg. Molly relates, ‘Cept I do hurt people sometimes, Case. I guess it’s just the way I’m wired.’[xvi] Moreover, toward the end of the novel we can view Molly’s ambiguous conclusion to the relationship. An inverted equilibrium of the narrative is restored within their relationship when the note left by Molly points again to Haraway’s ‘disassembly’ and ‘reassembly’. The note reads, ‘HEY ITS OK BUT ITS TAKING THE EDGE OF MY GAME, I PAID THE BILL ALREADY. IT’S THE WAY IAM WIRED I GUESS, WATCH YOUR ARSE OKAY? XXX MOLLY’ The language of Molly and its repetition of, ‘…THE WAY IAM WIRED I GUESS…’[xvii] becomes an insistent catch phrase, or chant for herself that reveals an understanding of her position of Haraway’s cyborg. Her dialogue reveals her role of symbiosis to the larger framework of a technologically advanced world that has influence upon the construction of her character. Molly is an apparent individual, a ‘razor girl’[xviii] with ‘…a gymnasts body and conjurers hands.’ who works outside the law to survive but within the framework of society.
Analogous to abandoning the law, Molly has also turned her back on the love story that might have been and has no intention of sacrificing her successful role as an embodiment of unconstrained technology. She will not give up herself to emotions linked to Case that may destroy, ‘…THE EDGE OF MY GAME…’ the non-emotional instinctive side of Molly’s behaviour. Case, on the other hand displays symbolic behaviour of non-acceptance to the dilemma of turning away from emotion. This appropriates him as working against the role of the cyborg. It is at the beginning of chapter two that an anomaly is raised about the nature of Case, when Armitage claims, ‘Our profile says you’re trying to con the street into killing you when you’re not looking.’[xix] And also claims ‘You’re suicidal, Case. The model gives you a month on the outside.’[xx] Here, Armitage is explaining that for some reason Case is trying to die in order to escape life on ‘the outside’. This raises the question of the finality of death within this novel. When in surgery, we learn that Case has been previously fitted with ‘…endorphin inhibitors.’[xxi] This manipulation by technology would destroy communications within the brain and cut off a part that would normally emit emotions of well-being.  The narrative here is portraying Case as an unstable and maligned character, but nevertheless controlled to some degree by the encompassing power of a technological society.
Toward the closing of the novel, after reading the message left by Molly we observe Case holding the shuriken, a ‘souvenir’[xxii] from Molly. He tells himself, ‘I never even found out what color her eyes were, she never showed me.’[xxiii] Not seeing her eyes or prevented in seeing them because of the technological barrier represented in the glasses can be interpreted as Case’s disappointment for not crossing the barrier of a working-relationship, into a personal human-relationship. The technology of the glasses becomes a symbolic form for the loss of the human in Molly and her gain of the cyborg. ‘Case then parts with the shuriken, “No”,[xxiv] he said, and spun, the star leaving his fingers, flash of silver, to bury itself in the wall screen.’  Although we can observe the thoughts of Case as, ‘Stars, destiny’[xxv] towards the acceptance of cyborg we can think the shuriken has a personal symbolic significance of holding onto to an emotion or belief of the human.  Moreover we observe an association between the shuriken and identity. At the beginning of chapter 13 we can observe the undercover police arrest and question Case. He has his history of previous aliases read out by one of three officers. Also, the belongings of Case that could constitute as aspects of his identity are on the bed, ‘The shuriken lay by itself, between jeans and underwear, on the sand-tinted temperfoam.’[xxvi]
Once Molly has ended their relationship Case accepts his fate and rids himself of the throwing star, ‘“I don’t need you,” he said.’[xxvii] In this realisation, the star becomes the symbol to absolve emotional ties and his personal history of identity of what it is to be human. This in turn, he then accepts his fate towards the transition of the cyborg. Also, in the next line of the text we could conceive again the love-story-ending of the human and how the narrative has been affected by technology toward the lifestyle of the cyborg.
For Case and Molly and their money earned through work alongside Case’s feelings for molly may have steered the narrative toward a romantic ending. However, he spends most of his money on items for his considered survival, ‘…a new pancreas and liver, the rest on a new Ono-sendai and a ticket back to the sprawl.’[xxviii] Case finds an ambiguously named girl ‘…who called herself Michael’[xxix] and ‘he never saw Molly again.’[xxx] Here the narrative is distorted from conventional ending to the ‘human’ novel and in doing so has created the ending to a cyborg novel. Case gets a new girl, who is mentioned briefly and this contributes a disruption to the narrative of the Case and Molly relationship. What can be interpreted as an ending of equilibrium in a conventional novelistic sense is instead the achievement of a part-human protagonist’s realisation, acceptance, and function of the cyborg. 
Again Haraway has an argument that sheds light on the dynamics of their relationship.

‘Unlike the hopes of Frankenstein’s monster, the cyborg does not expect its father to save it through restoration of the Garden; that is, through the fabrication of a heterosexual mate, through its completion in a finished whole, a city and cosmos.’[xxxi]

Applying then this mode of thought from Haraway we can understand that Molly can be observed with the notion of working outside the ‘Garden’ of Eden. This is observed when Molly utilizes the incorporated technology of the self, such as the blades, to gain employment as ‘a street samurai’.[xxxii] She shows understanding in the note left to Case, discussed earlier, of a supposed working ‘for’ or ‘against’ technology and how a relationship may destroy who she is. For this reason Molly decides upon her choice of becoming a cyborg of a technological society.  Paying attention to chapter 11 when Case meets up with Molly at a ‘cubical’ in Freeside we can observe Molly’s transition from a human victim of a ‘meat puppet’[xxxiii] to a cyborg. Molly had been a prostitute integrated with software that allowed her to be switched into an automatic mode. This renders her consciousness oblivious to the sexual acts performed on her by customers. In hindsight she reveals, ‘They had switched the software and started renting to speciality markets.’[xxxiv] It is the sale and trade of technology here that inflicts suffering on the human of Molly and causes her to ‘remember[xxxv] dreams of her routines with clients.  We then learn the theatrical scenes of what can be considered the quintessence of pornography, the ‘snuff’[xxxvi] movie, in which somebody is killed during the sexual act of Molly’s prostitution. Molly says, ‘I came up. I was in a routine with a customer’,[xxxvii] and ‘…we were both covered in blood. We weren’t alone. She was all…dead…’[xxxviii] Molly is greatly affected by the remembrance of this emotion, ‘she began to shake.’[xxxix]  In the next line we read Molly narrative shift back to the present and back to the role of the cyborg. This is achieved using an emphasis placed upon the conquering, or the suppression of emotions, ‘“So I guess I gave the senator what he really wanted, you know?” The shaking stopped.’[xl] The transition that occurs in the bodily mannerisms show a state of fluctuation and change of being that implies the demand that the cyborg has the capacity to ‘forget’. In sharing aspects of her history and identity she inflicts self harm. Her circumstances have produced in Molly the drive to be more technologically advanced. This is bound with her desire to function affectively and successfully in society as a street samurai. Molly has removed herself from the ‘garden’ that is symbolically voiced through the brothel in which she had worked. Molly destroys her ‘god’ of control represented by the ‘boss’ of the brothel who changed the software and the customer who had control whilst she was in the automatic setting of the meat puppet.
In regarding the past of Molly a parallel can be drawn between her and Case. In thinking that Case reaches his destiny of the cyborg in the closing of the novel, we can experience the point that Molly had destroyed her role of the human and attained her position of cyborg within society. She has accepted that there will be no restoration of the garden as an outlaw for this would mean surrendering back to imprisonment or the entrapment of prostitution that leaves her under the self-limited control of the technology of society.
To conclude this essay, we have observed the role of the cyborg and how it has established itself with the technological climate of the novel.  The technology of The Neuromancer permeates throughout the novel from the micro-biotic upwards through to the individual and society. Technology has its affect upon the environment by manifesting itself in a myriad of ways to a revealing of the environment as technology. The manifestation of technology, be it new software or techniques of the clinics, acts as a precursor of how the cyborg will operate. But the cyborg has the capacity to effect its environment on an individual level through its state of being and relationship. And also, regarding the fusion of the biotic and nature we have seen how the cyborg accomplishes a fruition when dealing on an individual level, by an expulsion of its emotions that are attributed to the human condition. So In order to operate within the world of The Neuromancer, the cyborg must synchronise with the conventions of technology of the environment. In a technological society it appears a devastating misfortune if the cyborg were to act otherwise.


“One of the strengths of science fiction is that it allows for a more complex and sophisticated response to the dynamics of difference, as well as allowing these issues to be addressed in a popular idiom” (Adam Roberts). Discuss representations of disability and/or gender in science fiction. r

read the amazing short story The Machine Stops, at http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html



‘The Machine Stops!’ by E.M. Forster was first published in 1947.  The short story depicts the contention for freedom within a totalitarian and technological society known as ‘the Machine’ (110).  Analysis will focus on ‘The Machine Stops!’ and a representation of disability within the genre of Science Fiction.  From the analysis we will appreciate an illegitimate representation of disability within Science Fiction that reflects a representation of disability in contemporary society.  Utilising the author’s pessimistic treatment upon the relationship between society and technology will reveal the social status of the protagonist as an inversion of a contemporary representation of disability.  We will focus on the non-conformist behaviour of the protagonist, Kuno, and his relationship with his mother that reveals him to be diametrically opposed to his totalitarian milieu.  The behaviour of Kuno is represented as a departure from the centralised control of the Machine towards the social margins of society.  We will discover that the departure of the protagonist from his home is analogous with a contemporary representation of disability existing at the margins of society.  This enables a questioning about the reliability of the term disability and subsequently establishes a problem with semantics. The problem results in understanding the definition of disability as an unstable and transient term.  Moreover, observing the dismantling of the natural environment in ‘The Machine Stops!’ reveals an oppressive social structure that manifests in the form of domination and is represented by the destruction and distortion of relations between humanity, nature and technology.  Therefore, without the regulation of The Machine we can view the representation of disability as neglecting the senses of man that affect his functional quality of awareness.  Submission of individuals to a totalitarian and dystopian society, at the expense of sacrificing inherent human qualities, presents a representation of society that is outmoded, limited, and dysfunctional.  In exploring these themes we will take into consideration the work of Lennard J Davis, Enforcing Normalcy, Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women and Judith butler, Performative Acts of Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.
Paralleling Enforcing Normalcy by Lennard J. Davis with a representation of disability in The Machine Stops conceives a holistic sense.  In relating to the marginalisation of Kuno we can view how Davis highlights the mental and physical spectrum of human representation and admonishes the meaning of the term, ‘disabled’ (xii). to be, ‘antiquated’ (xii).  He says, ‘The term “differently abled” has been recently used, but strictly needs to be applied to everyone, since all people, not just those who are paraplegic or autistic, are differently abled. (One person is a better artist; another is better at sports.) ’ (xii).  Davis continues by proposing hypocritical discrimination with the signified meaning of disability.  He says, ‘...our goal should be to help “normal” people to see the quotation marks around their assumed state.’ (12).  An outmoded signified meaning poses a problem as a limited method in representing disability within a society.  This inability to deal with a diverse representation of man can be observed when applied to the social status of Kuno and Vashti.
To establish an inversion of disability in ‘The Machine Stops!’ we find the term differently-abled prominent in recognising a functional model of society.  The dichotomy in social status between Vashti and Kuno demonstrates an inversion with a representation of contemporary disability.  We are able to observe the assumed normal state of Vashti as functional and Kuno as socially inept and marginalised.
Firstly, Kuno is represented with divergent physical and mental abilities that parallel Davis’s contemporary understanding of the term disabled.  Society appropriates the nominal physical ability of Kuno by him describing his own behaviour as extreme, ‘Day after day I went through ridiculous movements’ (127).  Also, “‘…I have been out of my feet’…For Kuno possessed a certain physical strength.’” (123).  The language of Kuno omits a descriptive term for walking and its vagueness emphasises the protagonist as infirm.  We can reveal a representation of Kuno that is limited and exclusive, ‘By these days it was a demerit to be muscular.’ (124).  The physical denomination of the individual is pushed to the optimal margins of society with threats of ‘homelessness.’  (Forster 123).  Society displays the characteristics of enforced eugenics, ‘…death. The victim is exposed to the air, which kills him.’ (123).  The assumed normal majority of Vashti further distinguishes the social status of Kuno, ‘People were almost exactly the same all over the world…’ (120).  In accordance with the theme of liberation we must note the narrative technique.  The author uses a semi-omniscient narrator that amplifies the position of an ostracised protagonist who is becoming conscious to the reality of the assumed normal majority.  The narrative technique is able to construct a uniform with a fearful population and also avoids undermining the paucity of awareness from the civilian with their naïve submission to an oppressive regime.
Davis refers to work of Fine and Asch who explore how a particular model of society can determine the representation of an individual within that specific society, ‘The crucial point is that a disabled person, as conceived by the nondisabled world, has no abilities or social functions [and]… those who do perform successfully are no longer viewed as disabled.’ (10).  We can detect a representation of suppression that is negotiated through the influential process of social function.  When Vashti has, ‘…a feeling for a small bed.’ (114).  we are able to observe control over her decision-making, ‘Complaint was useless, for beds were the same dimension all over the world, and to have had an alternative size would have involved vast alterations in the machine.’ (114).  The internal representation of Vashti allows us to examine an affect of covert social influence and for it to be revealed in terms of functionality.  In contrast to the ostracism of Kuno we can observe Vashti to be represented as living a functional life from a, ‘small room’, (109). described as, ‘...like the cell of a bee.’ (109).  In addition, Vashti displays little demand for physical motion, ‘The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world’ (113). and ‘An arm-chair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk - that is all the furniture. And in the arm-chair sits a swaddled lump of flesh.’ (109).  Although Vashti displays the physical traits of contemporary disability cited by Davis, we are however, able to understand how the inversion of the narrative represents her to be living amongst a functional and assumed normal state and how Kuno is ascribed a marginal social identity and is determined as disabled.  Ironically, Vashti is described within her room as, ‘swaddled’, (113). and chrysalis-like.  The room also composes part of a ‘honeycomb’ (146) structure that replicates the functional order of homes throughout society.  The mechanised supervision of the Machine is latent with imagery of a substitute parent that restricts and disables physical development between the stages of infancy and physical maturity.  This imagery denotes Vashti as a stabilised infant within the womb that initiates the juxtaposition with a room of office.  The imposition of a technological overseer symbolises a macrocosm of society that is more congruent with the genus of the insect that rejects the natural process of individual development by successfully impeding the growth of its progeny. 
When contrasting the physical difficulties and developments endured by Kuno we are able to understand how the dependence of Vashti develops physical incapacity that encourages isolation.  We can witness the use of a, ‘novum’, (Roberts 19). that reveals the enforcing quality of a regulated and assisting technology, ‘The chair, like the music, was worked by machinery, and it rolled her to the other side of the room, where the bell still rang importunately’ (Forster 109).   In the same passage of text we can observe that Vashti is also annoyed at receiving a visit without the regulation of technology.  The physical dependence on technology within the room conditions the mind of the functional citizen into maintaining a social equilibrium that is coalescent with the Machines authority.  Submission to the Machine creates a social majority that would be represented as disabled within contemporary society.  However, within ‘The Machine Stops!’ we are able to observe that the assumed normal majority is represented as functional and abled.  The inversion of disability between the novel and contemporary society reveals the term disability as a transient and unstable means of representation that is ineffective in encompassing the holistic model of cited by Davis.
Judith Butler accommodates an understanding of the physically limited patterns imposed upon Vashti and how this imposition can affect cognition.  In explaining her view of the, ‘…reified status of gender…’ (520).  Butler says, ‘…what is called gender identity is a performative accomplishment by social sanctions and taboo…it is instituted through a stylized repetition of acts.’ (520).   Butler’s viewpoint gives insight to the behaviour of Vashti that can figure as a performance of consciousness that is guided by the ideal of the Machine and maintained through replication to direct the cohesive force of society.  She confronts an element of control that the Machine has upon her behaviour at the exit from her room and the emotion of fear stirs her, ‘She was frightened of the tunnel: she had not seen it since her last child was born.’ To maintain a society fashioned in the image of the Machine we can understand control is enforced through fear.  A limitation upon Vashti’s decision making is used to ascertain the objective of her performance.  Her actions are supervised to oppose a contemporary representation of the family structure, toward the ideal, ‘…that the machine may progress eternally.’ (Forster 125).
We can locate a representation of disability with the Machine’s disruption to the relationship of mother and son that is resolved at the destruction of the Machine, ‘…the whole city broke like a honeycomb… For a moment they saw the nations of the dead.’ (146).  This prompts Vashti into displaying emotion toward her son for the first time, “‘Where are you?’ she sobbed.” (145).  In contrast, we observe the modus operandi of the Machine affecting the maternal capacity of Vashti, “‘Parents, duties of…cease at the moment of birth.’” (116).  In contemplation of her meeting Vashti exhibits behaviour that appears devoid of emotion and physical contact.  Her functional status within society disables the ability to comprehend a moment of physical reality and her ability to bond, ‘And if Kuno himself, flesh of flesh, stood what profit was there in that? She was too well-bred to shake him by the hand.’ (123).  When meeting Kuno face to face the influence of the Machine disrupts a reunification with her son.  Vashti opposes the nurturing instinct of the mother and her revolt towards the reunion manifests in an array of idiom, the affect the meeting has upon her ‘soul’, her use of ‘time’, exposure to the nature of the ‘sun’ and the physical interaction with, ‘…the rudest people.’ (123).
In her mythic description of the cyborg Donna Haraway reveals how the environment of the Machine limits the needs of the individual to ensure civilian abandonment of relations with the order of a natural environment.  She cites an explanation of how the conscious mind may perceive freedom, ‘Liberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative apprehension, of oppression, and so of possibility.’ (149).  In comparison to Judith butler, this passage emphasises the concept of freedom for both Vashti and Kuno.  For Vashti, freedom is represented as a performance of consciousness that is constructed within the social parameters of the Machine’s assumed normal majority.  This determines Vashti’s perception of freedom because society creates boundaries for the consciousness and limits imagination.  When paying attention to the response of Vashti to Kuno’s question, we understand that he needs to repeat to his mother, ‘I found a way out on my own.’ (124).  The narrator explains, ‘The phrase conveyed no meaning to her.’ (124).  For Vashti, the possibility of an alternative reality without the Machine exists as a symbol of fear, marginalisation and death.  The threat disables her conception of existing beyond the limitations of the Machine.  However, we can accommodate her behaviour as representing her in terms of functionality operating as an apparent freedom.  The stylised actions of Vashti are limited to those actions institutionalised within a reality that are subconsciously orchestrated by the environmental factors of the Machine.  Kuno’s revelation of experience and freedom outside the society of the Machine allows a contrast to the absence of emotion displayed by Vashti.  Kuno distinguishes himself from the intelligentsia of his mother’s peers ‘passionately’ (131).  He says, ‘Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine?  We created the machine to do our will but we cannot make it do our will now.’ (131).  Resisting Novels by Lennard J. Davis cites an understanding of the intelligentsia of society and we can observe this represented in Vashti and the social grouping of lecturers.  The interdependent status of lecturers represents disability by their improbable opposition of challenging the Machine’s governance of society.  Dependent upon social roles we can understand the categorisation of an intelligentsia as those who find difficulties in disregarding a class system of society, ‘they are the least likely candidates to rise above the prejudices of ideology, but would logically represent their own interests.’ (38).  We can observe the incremental development of social constraints and oppression issued from the ‘Central Committee’, (Forster 137).  Society’s gradual acceptance is explained, ‘Year by year it was served by increased efficiency and decreased intelligence.’ (Forster 138).  This would suggest that Vashti remains a highly functional component of society.  However, her role is bound to regulations of a rigid societal structure that does not accommodate for a social transcendence of humanity and serves to decrease social intelligence relative to the quantity of laws imposed upon civilians.
We can locate a representation of disability from civilians by the redundancy of self-assertion. The suppression of emotive behaviour impedes the civilian’s ability to escape from imminent danger.  When in need of vacating their underground quarters we can witness the chaos displayed by the assumed normal majority who are lacking the experience needed to confront the situation and assert decision making, ‘Others were yelling for Euthanasia or for respirators, or blaspheming the Machine.  Others stood at the doors of their cells fearing, like herself, either to stop in them or to leave them.’ (144).  A shift in reality occurs and the social performance of society is displaced and limited.  The centralised adherences of society, the refined individuals such as Vashti, are unable to function without the agency of the Machine.  The relationship between an assumed normal majority and the Machine’s artificial environment is destroyed and the representation of society is inverted and aligned with the limiting model of the contemporary representation of disability cited by Davis.  Destruction of the Machine allows us to deduce the inability of rational thinking brought about by fear and disability is represented with society unable to survive independently and confront the nature of this experience.  
Haraway expresses the role of the cyborg and its position in a world, ‘Any object or persons can be reasonably thought of in terms of disassembly and reassembly; no “natural” architectures constrain system design.’ (162).  The architecture of nature and man are there for the possible integration with technology that produces the role of the cyborg.  It is interesting to note that in order, ‘…that the Machine may progress…’ (Forster 125). and maintain the status quo of regulated human behaviour we can observe a physical transmutation is displayed by an unknown ‘creature’ (133).  Kuno is captured and the creature returns him to his quarters, ‘The worms had vanished, I was surrounded by artificial air.’ (133).  We can again observe a distortion to the natural biological order of the planet that parallels the analogy of the insect impeding the growth of its progeny.  In overpowering the rebellion of Kuno, the actions of the worm represents the existence of the animal kingdom and its fusion with artificial intelligence.  This represents a distortion to the power structure of human and animal in preference of the Machine’s dominance over human behaviour.
Haraway distinguishes the ambiguous boundaries between organisms and technology and comprehends possible realities between the human and technology that helps to draw a distinction between Kuno and Vashti, ‘Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves are frighteningly inert.’ (152).  The progression of Kuno across geographical boundaries enables him to comprehend the oppressive and temporal structure of society.  His experience on the surface of the earth allows him to witness the Machine’s renouncement of nature and an attempt of its obliteration.  The Machine sees no distinction between human, vegetation and animal, ‘Oh, the whole dell was full of the things.  They were denuding it, and the white snouts of others peeped out of the hole, ready if needed.  Everything that could be moved they brought – brushwood, bundles of fern, everything, and down we all went intertwined into hell.’ (133).  Haraway depicts two perspectives of the cyborg, ‘From one perspective, a cyborg is about the final imposition of a grid of control on the planet…From another perspective, a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities of which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines…’ (154).  In occupying a role in society, we can understand the status of Vashti as the intelligentsia that parallels the functional status of the worm.  However, the functional status of Vashti is represented as a distortion of a joint kinship that rejects the relationship between human and nature.  Her reaction to the knowledge of Kuno’s unpermitted visit to the surface of the earth, ‘It is not the kind of thing that spiritually-minded people do…but there is no legal objection to it.’ (124).  Her status of the intelligentsia performs with unbending intent to capitulate to the objectives of the Machine.
Haraway describes a contemporary representation of a relationship between animal and society that recognises the nature’s holistic relevance, ‘Movements for animal rights are not irrational denials of human uniqueness they are a clear sighted recognition across the discredited breach of nature and culture.’ (152).   In order to dominate the human, the Machine has managed to replicate a biological order, but in doing so, suppresses the abilities of society to encounter nature and comprehend their place within it.  Within the Machine, nature is represented as non-functional and marginalised and this exposes the relationship between society and nature as illegitimate.  Haraway distinguishes a source of responsibility with the relationship between human and technology, ‘The machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment. We can be responsible for machines; they do not dominate or threaten us; we are they.’ (180).  Kuno is represented as a search for the ability of society to regain responsibility of his technological society by the rebellion against the grid of control upon the planet. This represents the human, as a man on his own terms, thinking, feeling, and active in battling against the domination of society that has extinguished the relationship between man and nature.  
In conclusion we have discovered that examining the relationship between human and social structure, reveals a problem with the definition of disability within the novel and contemporary society.  The inversion of disability in contemporary society has enabled us to uncover the detrimental representation when determining a social group.  In ‘The Machine Stops’ we have observed a centralised governing power that prompts the marginalisation of sections of its society and can be understood as a model that negotiates society into an unworkable, fractured and limited model that fails in recognising dynamic and divergent aspects of man.  The performative qualities of society has also enabled us to recognise that disability can be represented in the form of social domination.  The relationship between technology and centralised government inhibits society of consciously recognising its oppressive circumstances and alternative representations of society.  This is achieved by enveloping society within constraints of fear.  The fear of marginalisation encourages society into the performance of functional duties within limited boundaries.  These boundaries are constructed from society’s attempt to replicate a distorted biological model of society.  Moreover, we can observe a representation of disability in society’s renouncement of nature, that favours an idealistic model of oppression, while disregarding a model of society that allows the development of a harmonious relationship between human, nature and technology. 

UFO prediction from retired NORAD officer, turn up over New York on oct 13th 2010



Latest UFO Sightings Over Manhattan daytime & nigh time. NY & Now El Paso, Texas!

Deadline Live radio link (click on DeadLine Live Oct wed 13  2010 displayed in the middle of the page)

ABC news UFO news coverage




A retired NORAD officer (North American Aerospace Defense Command, a USA organisation where secretive high technology is developed) has written in his book that aliens where going to fly over major cities of the world.  However, there are many people, some with inside knowledge, that are studying what is happening with relation to supposed UFO phenomenon. And some claim that it may be; that a ‘false flag’ (staged) and alien contact was going to take place on 13th OCT.  (Whether they already know about other entities about Earth is a different argument)

On Oct 13th sightings appear. On the NYC Internet radio show ‘Deadline Live’, the host was about to do a pretend War Of The Worlds mock invasion. What happened next is that a native New Yorker called in and gave a better description of the footage that was shown on ABC news clips that day. 

ABC news repot. Notice how the reporter is so bad at reporting what is going on. His questions and summary are lacking in questioning. In fact Andy Peters from the BBC (blue peter/top of the pops fame) would be a step up from this numbskull , the lack of military air presence after the 9/11 tragedy is also a bit suspect.  



Buzz Aldrin Reveals Existence of Monolith on Mars Moon!



This man went to the Moon and now he say’s this! He and Neil Armstrong and the crew have not had any promotion since achieving the ultimate accolade for the American people. (Some say this is this so they can remain gagged and not speak out about their experience within the US military space regime) at the end of the clip we see how he throws in GOD! This may be disclosure, because the church and ex- US officers are slowly announcing that aliens are about the universe.
On a side note, the military and the Catholic Church have all the money, the best scholars and all the expensive technological equipment such as weapons and telescopes. On the surface these to organizations have a media front. The military appear hard but dumb, the church appear disorganized and antiquated. They know exactly what they are doing!

19 Sept 2010

Buses

When the buses get choc-bloc and there is a bit of grief at the back. The anti deterent? Have the seats installed facing the back, not the front. Giving the people at the front a view of what is really going on and making them less paranoid.

18 Sept 2010

Grant Morrison-Individuality

Grant Morrison on Individuality-youtube.com
This scotsman is responsible for the book, The Invisibles. The talks are held at his book publisher's 'Disinfo Conference' in 2000. Grant talks about how individuality maybe a fraudulent way of being.
Terence Mckenna says something similar. He says that in archiac times man acted as one, more atuned or in sync with one another. Untill that is, at times of war, or hardship, or disaster. Man would then act for himself and those closest. This fractured the human being as an organic collective who had free will, but no agenda againts others. In the book, The Mutant Message, the aboriginals of Australia claim to be telepathic because they dont tell lies.

a certain order


Put the foot through the cloud
Dip toe out of dream
Raise a head into water
Into winds, send screams

Scrape around in a barrel
Dodging maggots, bad apples
Swim down and get higher
Use the bubbles when tired

Scratch a name scratch it quick
Use a memory stick
Find a clearing, brain jungle
Around empty mind, rumbles

A Song that lasts
As long as light casts
Paths through muddy waters
These moments distorted