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| The Cyborg (Fe)Man/ual |
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Socialization The central question here was: do we give it its information, or do we let it learn what it needs to know? What is the difference between the two? These questions are intimately tied to the questions we have on autonomy, personhood and agency. We acknowledge that even if we program it with "all knowledge" there are still things we are going to forget or assumptions that we are going to make. Libby, drawing on her research into different models of education, noted that there are multiple (and contradictory) ideas about how education takes place. First is the idea of the child as tabula rasa (a blank slate to be drawn upon); second is the idea of the child as "seed" (everything is already there, it just needs to "bloom"); and third, is the model of education as a transaction, a give and take between child and teacher. We ask: what assumptions about education and socialization are the makers of the cyborg working with? We have to recognize that at different times in history, what "learning" is has been different. The binary between given and learned experience has shifted throughout history. Second, we asked: Can it "do" different cultures or "ways of knowing?" Does it have a "multiple ways of knowing database" (MWOKDB)? If all knowledge is situated, what does it mean to have an all-knowing cyborg? Does this merely reproduce the idea of "the culture of no culture" that we read about in Modest Witness? We decided that it's impossible to "do" all cultures, because culture is a specific situated creation. An all-knowing cyborg is a conceit. Maybe we are asking that our cyborg be an anthropologist in that it recognizes its situatedness. But here we come to the question: are we creating this cyborg in our own image as anthropologists? Third, it seemed important to ask: will it grow (from infancy) or be fully formed at birth? (How do we deal with the interplay between physical growth and mental growth in human children? Does its knowledge correspond to its form in human terms? i.e. will it be a freaky baby? (And if so, what does it mean to say it's freaky?) We couldn't decide on what it might know at birth, but we also pondered how, if it is endowed with so much at birth (and here we were thinking in terms of "birth"), would it be/feel like a freak? If so, how what tools would it have to handle that? David reminded us that Yod in He, She, and It was overwhelmed by the data he had when he came to consciousness. Fourth, related to the question of the MWOKDB, we had to ask: whose morality will it have? If it has multiple ways of knowing, how will it handle the relativism of this knowledge in situations where different moral frameworks can be brought to bear? What basic moral values does it have and which are priority? We noted that most of us had an investment in it being "progressive" by our own standards, anti-racist, anti-sexist, non-homophobic etc. We would hope that it has a sense of empathy and that it can make moral connections to the world. We noted that we were working with a model of tolerance as the SLC community sees it in 2004. We would hope that it will be non-violent. These investments caused us to ponder: Is this a utopian cyborg? If it has a MWOKDB, how can we assert the primacy of these moral values? And would we want to contribute to the making of a cyborg that didn't embody these values? However, if we program it to have "empathy" and to be "anti-racist," won't it be able to learn the opposite if it is sentient and if we give it autonomy? We would like to ask cyborg makers to recognize that the morality of the cyborg is fraught and that moral stance is shaped by the moment in which the cyborg is created. We ask the cyborg makers to recognize the moral conditions and situatedness of their ideas in creation, just as we recognize our situatedness in hoping that it will be peaceful, anti-racist. Fifth, we pondered what it might mean to give our cyborg an MWOKDB. How does the structure/meaning of knowledges it has (data) affect one another? If the MWOKDB exists, how does the cyborg act? Will it be paralyzed by multiple ways of knowing? How, in turn, does the cyborg's experience of those multiple structures resist or reproduce them? Sixth: Asking questions about socialization also required us to think about its relationship to the species that created it. It seems like we're not just imaging creating a cyborg but a "race" or a "species." This raised several questions for us: What is its relationship to the species that creates it? What is its moral relationship in terms of survival? (Laura invoked Asimov's three laws of robotics at this point, in which the primary programming code of a robot is to do no harm to humans through action or inaction). Will this cyborg species be valued more than humans? Less? Would a cyborg have to die if dying would help humans? On the other hand (Gaia asked), if the cyborg is the only sentient creature that could reproduce in the future (because of environmental circumstances, etc), what would be the dangers or valuing it over humans? Finally, we asked about dependency: Should it have a period temporary dependency? If it was dependent upon us for its socialization, might it not look more kindly upon us? Would this enable us to "control" it (given Dale's point) if we wanted to? What are our anxieties about its potential superiority that result in us wanting it to be dependent upon us? What level does this "dependency" begin at -- physical dependency or intellectual? Some people pointed out that dependency was a form of bondage, while others argued that dependency isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's nice to be able to depend on something or someone. But overall, we want the makers of our cyborg to know the different meanings of dependency and understand its implications and uses. In short, we decided: We are conflicted about socialization! Some related questions that we were not able to respond to, because we ran out of time: Given the above, from whence does it derive its knowledge? Can it learn? And how? Will it heal itself? Does it require care? Or is it dependent? (related to ownership and length of ownership) Will it have a sense or humor, will its humor be culturally specific? How will it recognize the situatedness of knowledge (knowledge in other people?) |