Week 9 Flanerie and all that
November 21, 2010 by Noreen Dunnett
The impenetrable style of the Shields article provoked a series of tweets inviting clarification from colleagues. Being rather referential, I firstly to read Haraway and then research the term ‘flanerie’, which seemed very reminiscent of traditional cultural theorists, who felt themselves capable of observing without being part of what they observed. Interesting that the person practising ‘flanerie’ was the ‘flaneur’ and not the ‘flaneuse’!
Seeking clarification for Hayles phrase ‘reality is fundamentally computational’ provoked a colleague to comment on Douglas Adams’ secret of the universe – ‘42’! Something which did strike a chord in the Hayles 2006 article was the idea of what we made and what we became co-evolving. Although Hayles was talking about tools and the development of human consciousness, I would like to follow this up in my assignment on the role of narrative in human culture and cyberculture.
Other lifestream content was largely a collection of retweets which I hope to use in my aforementioned assignment – so looking at storytelling tools in order to present my ideas in the narrative format I will be investigating.
My final lifestream entries were based on the secondary reading – very interesting – Coyle looking at ordinary New Zealanders’ reactions to biotechnology and the sanctity and spirituality of the human body and Muri on the origins of the term ‘cyborg’ and ways in which science and technology appropriated it from literature and used it in a variety of ways to explore and symbolise humans and technology in the future.