Monday, March 23, 2009

Is Molly a theory? One of Many Questions

Cyborg Man and Neuromancer compared, results in viewing Case as a transcedent led to such a state by Molly - a inherently transcedent being:

"Political struggle is to see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point"(Cyb. Man)

One october night ...past... fissure authority...[case] saw three figures....the third figure...was himself (352)

The McCaffery reading conjures up the following questions:
He states that cyberpunk addresses what the philosophical, moral, and cultural issues are. In looking to neuromancer through this lense the following seem to be the issues addressed:
centralized control and surveillance, sexual boundaries (what is it to be a man or a woman?),body alteration- motivations/methods, the divide b/n humans and technology, free choice, the definition of what it means to be human, assimilation, information obsession/mediation, definition of experience - sensoral / physical - real or imagined, the authority of subjectivity vs objectivity, The definition of what "real" is, coding practices / categorization / topoi - their role in an information saturated environment.
Reverence of the natural - lifecycles/creation, classism, What does it mean to "live" through others - is it legitimate? What does it mean to think through others? - it's implications - this hits close to home - theory the study of other thinkers - thinking in their terms - intellectual property

Could we look at Molly as a theory? A frame of how to look at the information we are faced with?

What is the origin of truth within the matrix? This question leads to...
Maria Alcof, a stand point feminist, and her take on a hermenuetical approach to truth via gadamer/heidegger:

Alcoff discusses "understanding," a result of truth, as being able to be found in the process of interpreting or rather in the moment of interpretation, that takes into account the inter-relatedness of history, politics, temporal, and spacial aspects of the observer and that which is being obeserved. She essentially talks about "truth" in terms of an "event" that occurs as a result of taking into consideration the social horizon (gadamer reference here)of the observer and that which the observer seeks to understand. With this in mind we can look to pg 318 of Neruromancer at the following statement - "...said it was like an event. An' it was our horizon. Event horizon, he called it"

The former quotation refers to an elusive place...we can call it grounding...that linda and case are in pursuit of. It seems that the neuromancer has no problem in accessing this place and in fact one can look at the closing sequence - in which case transcends - as occuring in this elusive place.

Concannon and Gibson - take a run for the border
Where are the borders of the matrix? aside from those who can access it and those who cannot? Beyond the "eastern seaboard fission authority?"
These questions turn to issues of the limit of information - as a society we have not acknowledged the alpha/omega (beginning/end of information - how does one delineate such?

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