What exactly am I struggling with?

It seems I just needed a brake. There were several things in my life I needed to get done and leave behind before I could really focus on my research and my work. Yesterday I took all of my materials and went through them very carefully. Happily I realized that most of the difficult stuff is done and now it’s just about writing the thing. When I started out with an initial question like “has transhumanism created new social relations”, I really had only a hunch on what I was going to do.

What are social relations, I asked myself first. Since I have been studying Touraine, I had an general understanding of what I was going to do. Touraine understands social relations within society as a key part of subjective positions between “classes”. By classes he means the ruling class and the popular classes. All though Touraine emerged from a Marxist tradition of European (on precisely French) sociology, he quickly parted form that (and from the Communist party as well).

With class Touraine refers to “people” who are in control and the other “people” who are subjugated by this system. In Touraines system there are three components to a society understood as social relations: the state apparatus, the elite (ruling class) and the pupular classes (the subjugated). For Touraine the State is like a structure that delegates power and therefore the controlling of “the state” is important in order to control society.

That needs some explaining. For Touraine world history is a history of struggle between historical actors. Historical actors are in sense “true actors”. It takes a bit more than just a strike by the local factory or a street protest. A historical actor is only a true actor, if it can define it’s goals in the context of the whole of society. (As a separate note, I think this is what Touraine means when he speaks of ‘totality’). The understanding of the whole of society means that the tension between the elite and the popular classes have a context in the “culture” of society.

A historical actor understands the cultural orientations of society and therefore he or she is able to focus the struggle against the elite. A subjugated person is not aware of the “whole” and therefore is only a reactionary. Say, there is a strike at the local factory where the workers “attack” the bosses at the company, when the real problem is actually in a much wider system of slave capitalism. Note, that this example does not express my opinions about capitalism in the real world.

So, a historical actor that has the understanding of the “whole” can become a true social movement. Touraine claims that social movements are at the heart of society and they are the only driving force in history. The elite is just one “movement”, but Touraine is a bit confusing about that point.

Anyway, the social movement (like the workers movement Touraine researched himself) is struggling to control a) the status quo of cultural relations and b) the state apparatus c) history.

I am not going into detail with these, but Touraine generalizes this to any social movement. Here is where we finally come to Transhumanism.

If Transhumanism is a social movement, it should have some of the features Touraine gives to social movements. Well, I argue, that transhumanism is “struggling” to a) control the status quo understanding of science and technology, b) the “state” (political, institutional and economical element of S&T) and c) history. The history part here is a complicated one and the reader should get familiar with the way Touraine uses the word.

My first article is about arguing this. I am using the articles in the Journal of evolution and technology (JET) as my research data to see if the “meta-level” handling of the subject can be defined in Touraine’s terms. If so, then I suppose there is a strong argument about how Transhumanism (in the way JET articles can be read to define it) is in fact creating new kinds of social relations between people: between doctor and patient, between a politician and voter, etc.

And that would mean that it actually is propagating new cultural relations. Perhaps the debates in ethics and politics can be read as a manifestation of this “shift”.

The analysis I am going to use is all about analyzing how scientific knowledge is formed and how it is commonly understood. This is also called the Common Understanding of Science -problem.

I may or may not be back

It’s not looking good. Not good at all. I have all the material I need for the article, I have read enough to get a handle of things but I lack the energy to go forward. What could help me? A personal coach? Nicotine+coffeine combo. Drugs in general. Positive thinking… what? I tried resting since I had a five week holiday that just ended on Monday. Perhaps it’s time management, that I need. Tried that, failed. The question on my head now is, if this is lack of motivation, what is the source? I’d truly like to be working on the PhD and stuff, but I seem to be having everything else on my hands.
I have a strange fear of failing that I can’t seem to be able to shake off. Every time I try to create a finished draft (?!) of my article, I get tired and angry. I have a lot of writing on my hands, a Start up and several other projects that really interest me. So, should I skip this PhD and start concentrating on something else?
Well?
Hell no.
In the past, it has always been Motörhead (the band) that has given me inspiration – for good and bad – but now even that doesn’t seem to fit my mental state. The one thing Lemmy Kilmister once said in an interview keeps running in my head. He said, “Why is Motörhead where it is right now? Well, we just kept going”. I try to tell myself that by just keeping a up the thing things will start happening.
Sure, I did write a piece a while ago for IEET and sure, I do get a lot of encouragement from the people near me. It’s just that I feel the project as a burden in stead of a source of inspiration.
I can’t really stop now but it feels as if I am doing all the wrong things.
Tell you what. I’ll give it a go once again and try to have something done. Doing academic research is not like running or any other BS analogies people (who can do it) keep telling me.
I’m back or not. Let’s see.

The “need” for modification?

I just read an article about Mary Jose Cristernan, or “vampire lady” as she is called in the media. Mary has tattoeed almost 100 percent of her body and added some extreme implants under her skin. The most striking added features are the “horns” she has on her forehead.

Mary is not the first to do this – remember Orlan? In fact, as a cultural phenomenon body modification is as old as mankind. This has caught the interest of many researchers and one clear outcome of the research in to the field is that extreme body modifications are very closely connected to the cultural or religious habits of the social group. There is a good book edited by Mike Featherstone about body modification in general.

But not only is extreme body modification a cultural phenomenon, it is understandably also a very very personal matter. In the modern west we have a tendency to view things like this in a psychological framework. So, we set out to explain implants, tattoos and altered eye colors with the mental needs of the individual. I agree that having horns is propably a very empowering thing to have but I disagree about diminishing this in to a set of psychological explanations.

Not only do tattoos and other body modifications share symbols they also are a platform for the personal identity. In some cultures, this identity is strongly linked in to the cultural background such as having your ear peirced in order to show your social status.

The extreme body modification pioneers and the possible advances of modern technology are connected in at least one level. They are transgressing the boundaries of the human body. As these boundaries become more and more flexible, one can argue that this is something that can also alter what it is to be human.

And this is where transhumanism comes along.

There are some technologies I have been following for years. One is the mind-machine interfaces and “wearable computers”. We can be brave and call this the “cyberzation of the body”. The other is the research done in the field of artificial intelligens. If Siri pops to your mind, you are where the technology currently is going.

Transhumanism is very much about a concept of “enhancing” the individual. I quoting the word “enhance” just because it seems very often to be used as a concept to describe a larger phenomenon and not just some tweeks of the body here and there. In fact, I consider enhancement to be one of the key concepts of the future “what is it to be human” debates.

I’m not going to write about the debate side of the matter. The debate more or less gravitates around the question of what it is to be human, so as everyone can agree, that is a big discussion.

The point I’m making is that if human-machine interfaces become entagled with our body and mind and if artificial intelligence systems are more and more  doing our thinking, we are very likely to be enhanced. But also, as this progress goes on, we will come to a point where we start doing things with these new tools and that can cause disconnect with the way we are used to communicate and present ourselves.

Imagine walking around with special glasses that augment the reality around you. You see peoples Fb-updates hovering over their heads, commercials in the sidewalk, arrows pointing to where you are going (is it a loss of humanity, if we can’t get lost anymore?). Being a “user” of a system is more about being “apart of something” that just having a good tool for, say, communication.

This is  of course a prediction made with Facebook in mind. The technology we now have paves the way for new technologies we (want) to develop in the future. The future horizon is a daunting view. I don’t think we need to be over cautious about it since I don’t think technology “just happens”. I think technology develops in concert with our cultural values and social needs.

I may be a bit optimistic about the “need” to be modified or enhanced in this way. The way we are going is very likely to produce positive and negative effects, such as creating a culture that is accessible by only the few with the wits and the resources.

In that case it is a good question to ask, who gives us the “need”. Since needs gives us solutions and these solutions create new social roles and (importantly) new social relations, the outcome is something to be discussed.

In this vision of the future “extreme body modification” is to be understood at an industrial level. It is therefore given to the “masses” and it is impossible to predict what the outcome will be. Currently the pioneers of cyborgs and body modification are laying in place the initial discussion about the future. What our “needs” will be is a more or less controlled outcome of that discussion.

Will there be a new concept of humanity or will there be the thousands of years old “mankind” entering an enhanced world. I suppose that is one starting point of discussing the matter in depth.