ABOUT THE UNIT

Welcome to COM347 Technocultures for 2006!

This is a Part II Communication and Cultural Studies core unit, although with permission from the Programme Chairs, it can also be credited to a Women's Studies or Gender and Cultural Studies degree. There are no prerequisites other than completion of Part I. The unit consists of readings, a weekly lecture and tutorial. Assessment is based on a concepts test, research essays (and possible production component), group presentations and tutorial participation.

UNIT AIMS AND SCOPE

New technologies and new media are transforming our lives, changing the way we work, our leisure pursuits, the ways we communicate with our friends and family, and even things like the food we eat, the ways that species reproduce, and what we consider to constitute ‘life’ itself. This unit aims to provide students with some interpretative frameworks through which to question and analyse the place of technology in cultural formation and communications practices. Technologies have such an enormous impact on almost every aspect of our existence, it is crucial that we come to understand their effects, and thus become enabled to critique the many facets of the human-technology relation. While this unit will look at particular technologies, emphasis will also be on developing critical perspectives that can be applied to technology in general. Students are encouraged to focus on any particular technology or technological ensemble that interests them.

Part One: Technoculture and the Information Age - here we focus on information and communications technologies (e.g. the telephone, telegraph, television, computer, the internet and new media). This part of the course is particularly concerned with ways in which technologies of communication shape knowledge, and affect the cultural practices of the people who use them. This will involve questioning the very definition of technology, the ‘bias’ of various communications technologies, the way they have become embedded in social relations (e.g. of gender), and also in how we define our selves and our realities.

Part Two: Technobodies and the Posthuman – offers a critical perspective on how technology affects our understanding of what it means to be ‘human’. This part will focus on ways that new technologies have impacted upon our subjectivities and our bodies, by changing how we distinguish between the natural and the artificial, between organic life and a machine, and by impacting upon the reproduction and replication of life itself. What is a cyborg? Where does medical intervention stop and life begin? Is it possible to ‘engineer’ a human being? Can life and intelligence be created artificially? Is virtual sex possible? What does it mean to be ‘posthuman’?

There are strong conceptual links between the two parts of the unit - connections that will be critically evaluated in the readings and tutorials.