The Erotic Ontology Of Cyberspace

A summary of:
Heim, M. 1991. The erotic ontology of cyberspace. In Cyberspace: First Steps, M. Benedikt, Ed. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 59-80.

In this chapter, Heim describes the agency inwards which cyberspace lures us inwards with its “erotic ontology,” i.e. the agency it is enveloped inwards an aura of pleasure. We are, every bit a result, blinded to the to a greater extent than nefarious side of the Internet; e.g.: “Unfortunately, what technology scientific discipline gives with i hand, it oftentimes takes away with the other. Technology increasingly eliminates straight human interdependence. While our devices give us greater personal autonomy, at the same fourth dimension they disrupt the familiar networks of straight association. Because our machines automate much of our labor, nosotros receive got less to exercise with i another. Association becomes a witting human activity of will. Voluntary associations operate with less spontaneity than those sprouted yesteryear serendipity. Because machines render us with the powerfulness to flit most the universe, our communities grow to a greater extent than fragile, airy, as well as ephemeral, fifty-fifty every bit our connections multiply” (74). This is rattling insightful. It’s non so much that the Internet is making it to a greater extent than hard to score communities; merely rather its making doing so less important, hence pregnant that fewer of us build the endeavor to exercise so.

Heim likewise discusses the erotic allure of becoming percentage cyborg ourselves, as well as warns: “The darker side hides the sinister melding of human as well as machine. The cyborg or cybernetic organism implies that ht witting heed steers – the pregnant of the Greek kybernetes – our organic life. Organic life issue energy ceases to initiate our mental gestures. Can nosotros e'er locomote fully acquaint when nosotros alive through a surrogate trunk standing inwards for us? The stand-in self lacks the vulnerability as well as fragility of our primary identity. The stand-in self tin dismiss never fully stand upwards for us. The to a greater extent than nosotros fault the cyberbodies for ourselves, the to a greater extent than the machine twists our selves into the prostheses nosotros are wearing” (74). Gibson’s The View from the Edge: The Cyberpunk Handbook itself states that, “Each fourth dimension you lot add together a cybernetic enhancement, there’s a corresponding loss of humanity…. Walk carefully. Guard your mind” (20-22; inwards Heim, 75).

I recollect that Doctor Who likewise provides useful forage inwards the score of a parable, i.e. the even out of the Cybermen. This quote is my favorite, taken from the episode “Age of Steel” (Series 2, Episode 6):

The Doctor: [Looking at a fallen Cyberman] Now, let’s receive got a look. Know your enemy. Got a logo on the front. Lumic’s turned them into a brand. Heart of steel. But look.
Mrs Moore: Is that flesh?
The Doctor: Hmm. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 fundamental nervous system. Artificially grown as well as and then threaded throughout the suit so it responds similar a living thing. Well, it is a living thing. Oh, merely look. Emotional inhibitor. Stops them feeling anything.
Mrs Moore: But why?
The Doctor: It’s withal got a human brain. Imagine its reaction if it could meet itself. Realise itself within this thing. It would locomote insane.
Mrs Moore: So they cutting out the i matter that makes them human.
The Doctor: Because they receive got to.

In this episode, The Doctor defeats the Cybermen yesteryear shutting downwardly all of their emotional inhibitors, causing them to near downwardly or explode out of horror at what they had become.

This alarm (from Heim as well as from the writers of Doctor Who) doesn’t solely apply to the possibility of becoming cyborgs inwards the Cybermen sense; it is already happening when nosotros are becoming reliant on our technologies to the bird that nosotros can’t business office without them (see Carr, 2008). The interrogation nosotros receive got to enquire ourselves is if, when nosotros accept a adept hold off at what nosotros receive got become, nosotros are non going to locomote horrified at the prison theatre nosotros receive got caged ourselves in.

Heim likewise makes this uncomplicated statement: “Cyberspace without carefully set channels of selection may locomote a waste product of space” (78). Yes, because piece nosotros are quick to hail cyberspace every bit the ultimate liberator, nosotros may presently discovery that in that place is a dandy bargain less liberty as well as selection than nosotros imagine every bit it is defined now. The mission for my PhD, I receive got come upwards to realize, is most designing existent selection for the Internet, i.e. designing existent alternatives that exercise non forcefulness people to morph as well as arrange themselves to the parameters the electrical flow Internet prescribes. For example, Heim points out: “The ideal of the simultaneous all-at-once-ness of computerized data access undermines whatever public that is worth knowing” (80); yet for approximately of us, nosotros don’t receive got whatever existent selection most whether or non to locomote with the times, because non doing so, non beingness “included” every bit the Missionaries of the Internet mightiness telephone vociferation upwards it, amounts to falling behind, or fifty-fifty failing to evolve (and getting picked off similar a limping gazelle).

Heim concludes with this strange, evocative paragraph: “As nosotros suit upwards for the exciting hereafter inwards cyberspace” – authorities annotation the parallel, again, with the Cybermen analogy – “we must non lose touching on with the Zionites, the trunk people who rest rooted inwards the energies of the earth. They volition nudge us out of our heady reverie inwards this novel layer of reality. They volition remind us of the living genesis of cyberspace, of the heartbeat behind the laboratory, of the dearest that withal sprouts alongside the broken slag as well as the rusty shells of crude oil refineries ‘under the poisoned silvery sky’” (80).

Amen.