technoculture314-09

Tim W

Although this may seem somewhat belated, it was by going through the reading by Kingsley Dennis again that a real sense of intrusion came about. When we were asked to identify in class last week whether or not we felt this computer/organic mix of man and machine made us feel uneasy or if we even thought of ourselves as somewhat cyborg-ian I was completely in 'support' (for lack of a better word) for it. However, almost against my own will, the reading 'Opening Pandora's Box' has changed this. The initial thought process was that a collaboration of the infinitely amazing machine that is our body, and technology that we, as such advanced machines had invented, was to me a glorification of where we had come from and where we were going. It seemed odd that one wouldn't embrace these pioneering designs, as at some point every major technological advancement has been met with scrutiny by the masses. However, what got to me was the repeated and enormously government funded experiments into human psychological behavior modification, even from the simplest forms of behavioral manipulation by the Soviet Union on American diplomats via direct microwave radiation. Even as early as the 1970's when Jose Manuel Rodriguez Delgado posed the idea of a 'psychocivillised society', military intelligence not only from America who we tend to label as sinister in the area of psychological warfare, but global military markets have been investing huge amounts of money into research and development of cyborg devices for what is quite simply, mind control. What frightened me the most however was the 'New World Vistas' portion of the article in which the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board was working toward this 'Biological Process control' in which our own stored memories, movement and emotions were controlled! The fact that they have been operating such designs to some degree for nearly 40 years is something quite frightening indeed. Where is the ethical and moral line here? Has technology in our own lives become so intrusive in this socio-technical evolution that it would seem abnormal for our brains to not be bombarded with non-organic waves of information? Food for thought perhaps, but in my own opinion this epitomizes the ‘quantum leap too far’. “They will be painted onto walls, on furniture and objects, inside the body, ‘communicating with one another constantly and requiring no more power than that which they can glean from radio frequencies in the air’”