Source: Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture
Quotes
Eden:
In the pages of Out of Control, Kelly transformed the New Communalist dream of a rural Eden, of an anti-technocratic reintegration with nature, into a celebration of information technology, post-Fordist production practices, and the entrepreneurial engineers, executives and scientists who watched over both
Frontier:
They also modeled the land of America itself: “The bioelectronic frontier is an appropriate metaphor for what is happening in cyberspace, calling to mind as it does the spirit of invention and discovery that led ancient mariners to explore the world, generations of pioneers to tame the American continent, and, more recently, to man’s first exploration of outer space… Cyberspace is the land of knowledge, and the exploration of that land can be a civilization’s truest, highest calling.”
- Nature metaphors always seem to stick: natural, pure, authentic
- Gets twisted up with “tradition” and “what should be = what has always been” … essentialism?
- Electronic frontier: was created as a metaphor in order to educate the public on the potential of computers / digital tech
Q: Why can’t we let go of nature <> computers?
- Maybe: yearning for history (tradition, culture)
- yearning for one-ness, belonging: the world, connecting all *** both already existed, but threatened by removal from physicality, the body, embodiment — maybe one-ness lies in the body, inherited from the past, connected to the present** <> PIDD
Related Ideas
- Luce Irigaray & Cyborg Goddesses
- digital garden analogy