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In last week's episode, we talked with Rose Eveleth
about cyborgs.
Let's see what you had to say.
So first things first, as always when
we talk about social issues, I just
want to thank everybody who had like a nice, earnest,
respectful conversation, even if you disagreed,
which-- this is Idea Channel.
It's about discussion.
Disagreement is great.
It's OK, as long as you're respectful.
And yeah, we joked-- I joked a little bit with some people
earlier in this week about us making an OK to be smart-style
t-shirt.
Joe has a t-shirt that says "I did a science."
It would be nice if maybe we made some Idea Channel
t-shirts that said "I successfully interrogated
my preconceived notions," because that's really
what a lot of this is about.
And you know, there was some complaint
that the title was misleading.
You know, the title of the video is "Are We All Cyborgs."
And you know, I think actually I'm going to stand by--
and it was actually Morgan's suggestion
and I think that he totally nailed it.
And I think that that is what the title of the episode
was and should have been, for the reason
that-- and I want to make sure I get their name right, so I'm
going to read for second.
zoidosaurus pointed out on Twitter
that this episode was about what makes everyone a cyborg.
And this is something that Rose and I
talked about in the episode is that when we think
about cyborg, we tend to think about powerful white dudes that
have machine parts implanted into their meat.
And the point of our conversation
was to figure out what is cyborgian about everyone who
does not fit into that mold.
And that's what we spent a lot of the episode talking about.
It's just that I think a lot of people
who come to a conversation wanting
to talk about cyborgs come with this idea of what a cyborg is.
And so our conversation seemed beside the point,
because they were unable to interrogate
that preconceived notion.
So for everybody who did do that and for everybody
who tried to do it, I just want to say thank you.
boss1000 on the subreddit gets to I
think another important part of this conversation, which
is we tend, I think, to consider this type of thing
as a sort of byproduct of stories and fantasy
and empowerment.
But really, especially with technology becoming
so available and the understanding
of our bodies becoming so much more complete and like personal
and political-- that this really does turn into a community
question, a question about who is what.
And I think that it's really, really easy
to confuse discussions about communities
and who or what people are with, you
know-- I mean, we get charged with this constantly
on Idea Channel, with discussions about semantics,
and that really-- as boss1000 points out,
really it's about identity.
It's about how people see themselves
in the world, how that allows them to find people who
are like them to build a social structure
around those interests or abilities or characteristics
and how that empowers them and gives them agency.
And I just want to be really, really clear that that is--
if you see that as an argument or a discussion about simple
semantics, than to me that means you either don't know what that
experience is like firsthand or cannot appreciate someone else
having to go through it.
And so again, I would just encourage
you please to try to talk to people
who have had these experiences, try to put yourself
in their shoes or their bionic legs as the case may be.
IcyEyeG and Jon Laing and a couple other people
both get into this really interesting
and I think important conversation about open access
technology.
And in the imagined cyborgian future,
especially in the one where the availability of that technology
is well distributed and many different classes
and types of people are able to use it,
able to have access to it, are able to continue that collision
that we spoke about, there's this question
of who owns that technology and how do you get it?
And if the medical technology field as it stands right now
is any indication, those technologies
will be very heavily locked down, heavily protected,
very private.
They won't be open.
And that means something.
That means something in a sort of general humanistic sense
of what does it mean to have even more parts of your body
that you do not have direct access to.
You know, that is true to a certain degree
when you are entirely meat cage, as Rose put it.
But I think it means something different and something
more significant when there is external material owned
by another company implanted into your body,
especially if you are someone who
is in one of those classes of people who is affected
by systematic oppression, that this is essentially
a worry that it is another way for people to feel like they
have to follow some social or technological norm
and then suffer for it.
And I think that this is a really important and really
great thing to talk and think about,
to have this hope and this expectation
that as machine and body, as the space between those things
collapse that the machine part should be as open and publicly
accessible and free, as in speech,
as possible, as we could possibly do it.
fusselchen and a couple other people,
I think very rightfully so, pointed out
the part of our conversation where Rose very briefly
said-- mentioned that gender is a choice.
And I just want to-- I don't want
to put words in Rose's mouth, so I'm
going to speak from my perspective,
having known Rose for several years,
being a huge fan of her work, and having sort of listened to
and read a lot of it.
I feel like it's safe to say that what Rose meant
to say in that moment and what she
did mean is that there is-- that you will choose your gender
expression, that there is a performance that comes
with gender, to use the sort of Butlerian ideas,
and that that is the thing that you choose
and that not to the degree that gender, especially if you are
transitioning, is a choice that you're making
and that that's not actually who you
are and all this other stuff.
That was our bad, I think, in not catching
that-- not putting ourselves in the position of the audience
and not understanding that they would
understand what Rose meant.
So I want to apologize to you guys and also to Rose
for not doing better at that, so sorry.
devotedpupa makes the perfect, very timely connection
between cyborgs and Pokemon GO in saying that, you know,
like what is the future of cyborgian technology
as it relates to augmented reality?
And I think that this is a really great and interesting
question.
And I think maybe we do stand on the precipice
and that Pokemon GO is in some way a start more
so than-- I know that Ingress and other ARGs
have existed for quite a while, but that Pokemon GO sort of
seems to be a much more rampant and present
technological and cultural force.
Maybe this means we stand on the precipice of a new way
of looking at the world.
I cannot help-- as a Shadowrun GM cannot help but think
of Shadowrun and my players and their characters,
all of whom have inbuilt augmented reality like in some
of their cyber eyes or whatever.
And whenever we're playing, one of the things
that I can't help but think is how,
you know, I would totally forgive if one of the players
in-game is just like constantly playing a subgame,
like an in-game game, because that's what I
would do if I had a cyber eye.
I would just always have like Tetris running or Minesweeper,
something where you don't really have to pay attention
but every once in a while you can just go like boop.
And so I guess what I'm saying is yes, please.
Troj Bruegel makes the very unexpected connection,
a connection that I never would have made, between cyborgs
and furries, which I love because they both sort of sit
in this place of trying to figure out
what your ideal body is and how you can make
your physical form express how you feel on the interior,
and that in some ways you might do that with technology.
And in some ways you might do that with, you know,
a fur suit or other such things.
And I just-- this was unexpected,
really sort of broadened my understanding of things
a little bit.
So yeah, thank you, Troj.
hollandscottthomas, I love this comment.
And I want to point out this comment
because it does something very, very well that I feel
like a lot of times I can't or shouldn't do,
which is to call people out, basically.
And what this comment does is it gets
to the heart of a lot of the things
that we talked about in the episode.
It does a really charitable reading of it.
It synthesizes a lot of things that Rose and I
talked about that I think I would have a hard time putting
into words, having had the conversation,
and also really puts all of the nonsense that happened
in the comments and that happens in every comment
section on YouTube for every video
where people talk about how great women are, really puts it
in its place, really puts all that nonsense in its place.
And you know, I feel a lot of times like I really
want to do this kind of thing but that I can't or I
shouldn't, because it's more important for me
to be like a gracious host.
And if I'm really like calling people out,
it means that I'm the salty one or it
means that like I don't respect people's differences, when,
you know, it seems like most of the time they don't respect
mine.
And so, yeah, this just struck me
as like I wish I had written this comment.
And I wish I had even like written this in my Evernote
and it had never seen the light of day,
so I just wanted to-- for the people who made it this far
and for hollandscottthomas, if we had a Comment of the Year
award, this might get it.
Speaking of which, Zer0Spinn, there
is a book by Simone de Beauvoir.
It's called "The Second Sex."
It's a great book.
It is a very important entry in philosophy and gender studies
about what it means to be a woman.
You can read that entire book to learn
about how it is not the word that you
use that I can't say because this is a PBS show, that women
are not normal.
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