Materials for Claire's Class

Everyone should've received an email on Saturday morning with a link to the Donna J. Haraway readings from her book When Species Meet, but in case anyone missed it the link to download the pdfs is here. I've been reading like mad in search of sources that will resonate on the technology side of things, specifically regarding the nature of the human relationship with technology. I had hoped to find something that would pertain enough to include another entire reading, but instead what I've found to be useful has been too fractal; usable bits and pieces of all kinds of different things. So here are some of the main points from various things I've read that might help you get an idea of where I'm heading with all of this (especially after having read Haraway).

- McLuhan's assertion in The Medium is the Message that the very essence of technology is fragmenting.

- McLuhan's concerns presented in The Gadget Lover that media and technology are destroying (or at least debilitating) our imaginiative capabilities.

- Heidegger (in Critique of Technology) maintains that we are "unfree and chained to technology."

- Both anecdotal evidence and a wide range of articles out there (such as this one) illustrate the ever increasing prevalence of digital technologies in Americans' every day lives.

Other things to think about:

- Dogs as technology (ie breed manipulation, cloning, etc)

- Dogs differentiating themselves from other technologies because not only do we spend our money on them, but they themselves are pseudo consumers in the market

- Understanding the ramifications of and vast contexts to our modern digital media technologies and the roles they play in our everyday lives

- Understanding the totally separate skill set necessary for communing with this "other" (canine), as opposed to the skill set necessary to navigate technologies

- Questions of design; canine design (including the human element) + the design of technologies

Looking forward to class tomorrow!