Holeton, Chapter 1 Discussion Threads

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1. re: Turkle and Lakoff
2. re: Turkle and Ullman
3. re: Platt and Lakoff
4. re: Lakoff and Ullman
5. re: Lakoff and Gibson
6. re: New Windows on the Self

New Threads for CC Online:
7. re: Gibson and Branwyn
8. re: Haraway and New Windows on the Self

re: Turkle and Lakoff
1. Sherry Turkle writes that computer-screen "windows have become a powerful metaphor for thinking about the self as a multiple, distributed system" (¶ 17); George Lakoff (in the Boal interview, referring to the work of Michael Reddy) says that "our major metaphor for communication comes out of a general metaphor for the mind in which ideas are taken as objects and thought is taken as the manipulation of objects" (¶ 4). To conceive of our identity in terms of different "windows" open to different contexts, as Turkle does, do you think that we must consider information as something separate from our bodies? That is, to what extent do you think that Turkle’s windows metaphor depends on Reddy’s conduit metaphor? How persuasive do you find these metaphors as expressions of your own identity?

re: Turkle and Ullman
2. Ellen Ullman’s experience as an engineer and e-mail lover offers an interesting case study for Sherry Turkle’s ideas about developing multiple aspects of the self in electronic spaces. How does Ullman construct a new self, or "cycle through" different selves in Turkle’s terms, through her use of e-mail and "group aliases"? How would you compare Ullman’s experience with those of other subjects described by Turkle?

re: Platt and Lakoff
3. Based on Boal’s interview, how do you think George Lakoff would respond to the Turing test or the Loebner contest in which Charles Platt participates, where people compete with computer programs to see which appears more "human"? What assumptions about human nature or the nature of intelligence do Lakoff and Loebner reveal? What’s your own reaction to the Turing/Loebner tests as measures of intelligence?

re: Lakoff and Ullman
4. How do you think Ellen Ullman, based on her essay, would respond to George Lakoff’s ideas about the physical embodiment of human intelligence and communication?

re: Lakoff and Gibson
5. To what extent do you think Johnny or other characters in "Johnny Mnemonic" embody the conduit metaphor criticized by George Lakoff? Do you think Johnny transcends the limitations of this metaphor by joining the Lo Teks at the end of the story?

re: New Windows on the Self
6. Regarding the relationship between "real life" and virtual computer spaces, one of Sherry Turkle’s subjects who spends a lot of time online asks, "Why grant such superior status to the self that has the body when the selves that don’t have bodies are able to have different kinds of experiences?" (¶ 19). How do you think this question would be answered differently or similarly by Charles Platt, George Lakoff, Ellen Ullman, and William Gibson? What is your own view?

re: Gibson and Branwyn
7. With the major characters in "Johnny Mnemonic" all sporting various bionic and neural enhancements, Gibson seems to play on what Allucquere Rosanne Stone calls "cyborg envy.... the fantasy of disembodiment, the deep childlike desire to go beyond one’s body" (qtd. in Branwyn). While Stone suggests that "the desire to be wired" is "not necessarily a bad thing," Don Ihde argues that the costs of bionic enhancement make it a "Faustian bargain." With whom do you agree more, based on Gibson’s story and Branwyn’s article?

re: Haraway and New Windows on the Self
8. Based on Hari Kunzru’s profile and her own early version of "A Manifesto for Cyborgs ," how do you think Donna Haraway would respond to the question asked by Sherry Turkle’s subject in Discussion Thread 6?