Re: The postmodern body

Anne-Marie Capili Achico (achico@ewl.uky.edu)
27 Jun 1996 21:22:02 GMT

Gerold Firl (geroldf@sdd.hp.com) wrote:
: You're getting carried away a little here; the net is a great
: information-transfer and communications tool, and as such it will have
: Cyber-power may be useful as a means of acquiring social power;
: otherwise, it's a poor substitute.

Okay, I'm going to take the side of the post-modernist, I think.
True that the idea of a "virtual cyber mind/body" is /really/
way out of there - I don't see how it should be totally impossible.

Present I don't think we are even close to achieving this type of
"completeness" but I am willing to say that we are heading in that
general direction.

This area of anthropology should be looked into. In my opinion
it is a kind of Future Evolution Theory - where is the human
species heading toward? What are we getting ourselves into, and
what are we doing today that could be leading us in that direction?

All sciences have their own areas of wacky theorists - theoretical physicists,
Stephen J. Hawkins - and others. Let me clarify myself - they aren't
wacky in the sense that they are a bunch of nuts. It just takes
more than the standard way of thinking to understand what they are talking
about. It requires that the one who studies them has in their head:
"This isn't entirely impossible - but at this time there is no way we
can say this is completely true"
All you biological anthropologists will recall that it wasn't until
this last century that scientists found that the heart of inheritance
was in the chromosome - as opposed to proteins/amino acids.

Anyways, back to the postmodernist thinking.
(I'll try to make this brief ;) )
Who's to say that sometime in the future we will no longer need bodies?
In the future, what if everything we are born with will have nothing
to do with the way we live?
Could tomorrow's technology bring about true egalitarianism?
Today's scientists are already playing with virtual reality and
artificial reproduction. Comatose patients and astronauts are able
to survive on food squirted from a bottle.

Arthur C. Clarke's novel/movie (this is just an idea not to be taken as
fact!), played with the idea that one day we, as anthropomorphic
beings will one day - millions of years from now - will evolve into
beings that no longer exist in the "material" realm. That we
will all be beings of only mind.

I can see how scientist would not take postmodernism very seriously.
Like other "liberal" areas of science it is difficult to find
any type of proof on something like that.
It is not as if the scientific method can play a solid role in this
kind theoretical thoughts; we can only observe.

This shouldn't be taken as crazy or impossible. It should be
accepted as "a possibility".

<g> Think of it as "scientific philosophy" - the qualitative "why not?"

Anne

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| Anne-Marie Achico        | If you have to walk       ----

| University of Kentucky   | on thin ice you might       ----

| achico@mik.uky.edu       |    as well dance.             ----

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