Category: Blog

Having an intelligent robot be able to always learn and never make a mental error illustrates how they don’t have a mind or body. As humans, we have the ability to separate the mind and the body, but also have them work in tandem. Katherine Hayles’ How We Become Posthuman claims that there is no embodiment as this allows information to be free and not constricted by society. We should be able to feel and determine different emotions based on the situation and environment presented because it’s natural to us. Once we sense that things are now being forced upon us and has lost the naturalbility of the moment, we fight for it to be changed back. Ash in the episode “Be Right Back” in the show Black Mirror, and the wives from the movie Stepford Wives have their minds mimicked and placed into machines so that they have now lost their individuality. These characters represent embodied virtuality because they have become something that is sustainable but in the end isn’t real.

Ash in Black Mirror is brought back in a messed up way through technological advances by his wife Martha to take the pain away. The thing that wears the skin of Ash is something that nether has a body or mind because it’s a robot that doesn’t learn but is programmed to know everything. His mind wasn’t able to control itself in the way Martha wanted and expected Ash to make the same snark remarks towards her and feel emotion in specific situations. In Hayles piece, she quotes Political scientist C.B Macpherson about possessive individualism saying “The human essence is freedom from the wills of others and freedom is a function of possession”(Hayles 3). Ash doesn’t have ability to make Martha feel the way she did when he was actually there on an emotional level.

In terms of gender, I don’t think there is much to it when it comes to Ash and Martha because it is the human aspect that is taken away, making her unable the grieve normally. In Stepford Wives on the other hand, It has all to do with gender roles because they physically took away their individualism so that a mans view of a women can be shaped and manipulated for their own personal gain.

Katherine Hayles introduces the topic of dualism between mind and body in the first chapter of How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. This concept is something that can come with confusion but in short it is the idea that the mind and body are two separate entities.  Hayles explains that there are many things that separate the mind and body. In media we can find examples of this concept in both the Netflix show Black Mirror, and the film Stepford Wives. Both films show how the mind and body can be separate however this separation can create conflicts when they are not working together as a whole.

In the episode “Be Right Back,” from the Netflix show Black Morror, focuses on Ash and Martha. Early in the episode Ash dies in a car accident leaving Martha alone and grieving. A friend of Martha’s suggests she signs up for a program that takes the deceased online information and social media and creates a form of communication between the living and the dead. Martha is hesitant at first but once she finds out she is pregnant with Ash’s child she is eager to hear from him one last time. Martha becomes obsessed with talking to “Ash” every day and is pushed to the point of spending money to get to the next level of the program which includes creating a body for “Ash” to live and communicate in. Martha starts to realize that although she can physically see Ash’s face and hear his voice, his online self-did not fully capture who he really was, it only captured a portion of his mind. This causes Martha to banish “Ash” to the attic. Although Ash was again able to interact with people and react to stimuli around him, it was not truly Ash reacting. Hayles describes embodied virtuality like playing a virtual game, she states the “game takes place partly in real life and partly in virtual reality.” This is just like how Ash is presented in the show. His mind was just a product of the internet and his social media, the company was not able to truly collect the real Ash because certain situations are not shared online making it hard to truly know a person based solely on their online profiles. Ash now exists in both virtual reality and in real life making him a perfect example to the concept Hayles has presented.

Another example can be seen in the film The Stepford Wives. During the movie the main character Joanna and her family move from the city to the town of Stepford. It is here that Joanna discovers that the husbands of the town are killing their wives in order to create the perfect robot wife. Similarly, to Black Mirror, the wives are not real humans but they look, act, and react like real humans however, they are the product of a simulation created by the husbands of the town. The wives lack consciousness because their real minds no longer exist and the real bodies of the wives have also been taken away making an example of how embodied virtual reality that can take a dark turn.

Ash from “Be Right Back” and the wives from The Stepford Wives are both good examples of embodied virtuality presented by Katherine Hayles. These two examples can help us understand the concept and easily allow us to see that real life and virtual reality are two entirely separate things that don’t necessarily mesh well together.

In “Toward Embodied Virtuality,” Katherine Hayles discusses her perspective on dualism. Dualism is considered the separation of the mind and body, in which either one may have the capability of functioning without the other. This text describes how the growth of intelligent machines may indeed lead to a cyborg population one day. This then places the question of what exactly makes us human. By examining the mind and body, not only as a whole, but as separate entities, one can critically analyze embodied virtuality and the big question: Can the mind and body function separately, or do these entities need each other in order to function properly?

In my opinion, both the mind and body influence one another. As Hayles states in her text, “embodiment makes clear that thought is a much broader cognitive function depending for its specificities on the embodied form enacting it” (Prologue 14). This clarifies that the mind influences the body, as well as the body influencing the mind. The physical characteristics of a being may impact their thinking in a positive or negative way. Thoughts and opinions may be altered due to the way one sees themselves. In addition, the mind impacts the physical characteristics and functioning of the body. For example, stress can negatively impact the regular functioning of the human body and results in an altered way of thinking. However, some still question whether the mind can be put into a machine and still function the same way as humans do now. Therefore, in relation, the TV series Black Mirror and the women from the movie Stepford Wives represent this idea of an embodied virtuality.

The women in Stepford Wives contain a simulation like mind with a machine body. In this movie, men move their families to a small town in order to replace them with human-like machines. However, the women only function how the husbands have altered their system to work. Therefore, the wives become more obedient, tidy, and the stereotypical representation of ‘what a women should be like.’ In this case, a separate mind, or program containing a simulation of a human mind, was put into a machine to portray the women. The body was also created to look exactly like the women. However, the body could not function properly if trauma occurred. In the movie, one of the women who hadn’t been replaced yet found her best friend to suddenly be a cyborg. The woman got so scared that she cut her best friend but the friend does not bleed. However due to this trauma the body could no longer function. The body started to spas, as well as the mind. This portrayed that although the body may seem real, it is only a fake embodiment of a simulated thinking process. Although the machine version of the wife tried “encourage a comparable fantasy,” I believe that it ultimately failed in the end (Hayles 12). Therefore, I believe that those who believe “that because we are essentially information, we can do away with the body” are wrong. The mind and body have to be connected in order to create the whole being; if one system fails, the other will too.

Similarly, in Black Mirror, a woman’s husband dies suddenly. In order to help her grieve, she starts using an online system that used all of the husband’s online data to recreated conversions, as if he was writing them. This then turned into her ordering a human-like machine to mimic her husband. The husband’s thoughts and words were created through videos, pictures, and text from his online life. This created a mind just like the real husband’s. However, the body was simply there for looks, he could not portray his feelings or actions like the husband did and could not show true emotions. Without human bodily functions, the machine’s mind was simply not enough. Therefore, this supports Hayles idea when it is stated that, “we see only what our systemic organization allows us to see,” describing that, in relation to Black Mirror, the machine version of the husband can only do so much with what was programmed into the system (Hayles 11). This means that although he may talk the same, his actions and responses do not match or are irrelevant.

Overall, dualism in my opinion helps identify what makes us human. Dualism is the separation of body and mind, yet with the separation the identity of the individual is lost. Black Mirror and Stepford Wives both show that the mind cannot make up for physical features and actions. Therefore, integrating a thinking process like the human species now into a machine will never make them human. The emotions are unable to be portrayed correctly, actions do not match up, and there is no empathy within the simulation.

In her book Toward Embodied Virtuality, Katherine Hayles discusses her shifting perspective on dualism. Her text defines this as the separation of body and mind. Throughout Hayles’ text, she suggests that although skeptical at first, this separation is possible and this possibility has been hinted at since the early 1950’s. Even the very premise of Star Trek is produced in a setting where they “imagine that the body can be dematerialized into an informational pattern and rematerialized, without change at a remote location,” (Hayles 1). Throughout the Be Right Back episode of Black Mirror and the movie Stepford Wives, it is evident that the human synthesis of mind and body may not be as theoretically clear as one would imagine.

Hayles’ idea of virtual embodiment is perfectly captured in season two episode one of Black Mirror. It is set during a morbid time in Martha’s life due to the recent death of her husband Ash. Coming to grips with the reality of Ash’s death was proving to be near impossible until Sarah, Martha’s family friend, introduced a new form of experimental technology to her, making it possible for Martha to talk to and interact with a cyborg version of Ash through the use of a computer program. As an avid user of social media, this program gathered all of Ash’s past activity and compiled it to make a very real and lifelike cyborg version of the old human Ash. With the fast-approaching arrival of her new baby, Martha grew attached to this cyborg version and took “him” with her everywhere she went so that she can escape the loneliness she feels. However soon she came to realize that although this cyborg embodied Ash physically, the only mental connection it had to the human Ash was the compilation of all the internet data it could gather. Martha came to realize that no matter how hard she tried, this cyborg could never embody the personal feelings or emotions of the human Ash because ultimately, this cyborg was just one giant physical hard drive holding living proof of Ash’s existence and nothing more. Hayles’ concept of virtual embodiment is applicable throughout this episode because Ash’s cyborg does not fully embody his true self and as this becomes more evident to Martha she grows frustrated and attempts to get rid of him. Things as simple as his submission to her even when she ordered him to jump off the cliff was proof to her that this clone could not embody Ash because nothing of his mind or body was original. Other than the cyborg’s exact replica of Ash, cyborg Ash would have to be “programmed” to cry in essence. As Hayles explains, this cyborg was simply a matter and product of experimental science and nothing more because no cyborg can truly embody a living person according to Hayles’ reasoning that “central to the construction of the cyborg are informational pathways connecting the organic body to its prosthetic extensions,” (Hayles 2). Based upon this logic, the cyborg version of Ash was only as good as the connection it had to Ash’s activity on the internet.

Another example of Hayles’ explanation of virtual embodiment can be seen in the movie Stepford Wives. The story takes place in a classic suburban town called Stepford, where Joanna and her husband and kids moved to from New York in their search for a quieter and more stable life away from the city. Joanna, a carefree spirit quickly finds out that the women of Stepford are a rare breed in accepting the extreme patriarchal society in which they live in. All of the women are submissive to their husbands and represent the idealistic version of “the perfect wife.” They cook, clean, stay home, and take care of the children and tend to their husband’s needs with no mind or personality of their own. Joanna soon discovers that this submission was forced upon the wives of Stepford as the Stepford Men’s association would kill their wives and create the perfect idealistic housewife cyborg version of each of their wives, personalizing them in looks alone. Hayles’ idea of dualism is personified by the wives in that their mind and body are separated. Although each of the wives are personalized to look exactly like their human forms, their minds are essentially altered completely to fit their husbands’ standards of an ideal submissive wife, thus creating the perfect post human.

Toward Embodied Virtuality discusses Katherine Hayles’ shifting perspective on dualism. She explains this separation of the mind and body as an unavoidable result of ever growing technology. Season 2 episode 1 of Black Mirror and the movie Stepford Wives both illustrate this ideology perfectly. In Black Mirror, Ash’s cyborg version physically embodies his human counterpart however, his mind can only collect the information that the human Ash stored on the internet. This left no possibility for raw emotion from the cyborg. In Stepford Wives, the men’s association killed all of the women and created cyborg versions of their wives that were true to each of their human physical forms yet their minds were completely altered. These substantiate Hayles’ theory that due to our continuous growth in technological innovations with the creations and inventions of smarter machines, one day we all may just become a population of cyborgs.

As technology becomes more advanced, our society becomes more advanced as well. Katherine Hayles, author of “Toward Embodied Virtuality” recognized this, and took it a step further by explaining how our society is not only advancing with technology, but is becoming more and more like technology itself. She worries that by doing so, we are becoming disembodied beings. The women in Stepford Wives and Ash in Black Mirror are great examples of this shift in humanity. By taking a look at how these characters were changed by technology, this essay will show that by looking at our bodies as objects and not as an important part of our being, we are becoming more like cyborgs and straying from humanity.

In Stepford Wives, the “women” were, to the men, absolutely perfect. These “women” cooked and cleaned all day. Their houses were spotless and their children were always looked after. They were always polite and never asked any questions. They had no curiosities or doubts regarding their husbands. This; however, was not because of how they were raised or the morals they held. No, it was because that was how they were made. Everything about the once human women, was traded out for much better behaved and mannerly androids. The bodies and souls of the human women were not regarded with respect or care. The thought that these women were people-people who loved, laughed, cried, lived was not even considered. They were seen as objects. As something to be changed and altered. But they didn’t have the means to actually change their wives, so they opted to create copies of them instead and transferred the altered minds of the women into androids.

Because the men did this, they moved away from humanity and toward an embodied virtuality. Hayles was not against humans using technology to better themselves, but was afraid of “posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being” (5). Hayles  tried to explain that when the human body is seen only as an object, as something we possess, then we are moving away from humanity itself. Now this doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate technology as it advances and use it to build a better life for ourselves. Hayles is just trying to say that once we move from loving and celebrating technology to “being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality” we stray from what makes us human (5).

This also matched up with how Ash was created in Black Mirror. Ash  was once a human character on the show; however, after he died his wife, Martha, could not take the grief and was signed up for a service that lets you talk to your dead loved one by transferring data onto a phone. At first Martha was opposed to this, but after she discovered she was pregnant, she couldn’t deny it any longer: she needed to talk to him. Texting with Ash slowly becomes not enough and she soon gives the service all of his videos so she can actually talk to him. This leads to a desperate purchase of an android that looks just like him and acts just like him. It has most of his personality, although he is still missing something, and Martha eventually comes to realize this.

Some people today still think that by placing one’s consciousness into a machine, we can get rid of the boundaries held by our own bodies. Hayles commented on this by stating, “Yet the cultural contexts and technological histories in which cellular automata theories are embedded encourage a comparable fantasy-that because we are essentially information, we can do away with the body” (12). They believe that it would turn the machine into a perfect copy of the human that once lived and that there would be no downfalls. As it was seen in Ash and the women of Stepford, that was not the case. Just like Hayles believes, in the action of doing away with the body we are getting rid of an important part of ourselves and this world.

As Hayles explains in  “Toward Embodied Virtuality” it is not right to view the body as an object and the mind as solely who we are. Just because our mind is filled with information, doesn’t mean our body doesn’t attribute to who we are as beings. Once we start to view our bodies as objects and do away with them, we become more and more like disembodied beings. Beings that are like us, but who fall short from who we actually are.

Katherine Hayles, in “Toward Embodied Virtuality” touches virtuality, an uncomfortable subject, to some extent, that is slowly becoming the normality. She addresses how human beings have evolved with technology to become the posthumans. Exploring the idea of how information can circulate without the need of an actual body, the construction and popularity of cyborgs is also growing. Even though the connection with technology and humans is increasing, I do not believe one day we will become a society full of cyborgs who are unrecognizable from a human being, or as she calls us, posthumans.

A perfect example to support this idea is the limitations that cyborgs have, because they are in fact a representation of only the information stored in them, just like Hayles address it on her paper, “An artifact materially expresses the concept it embodies” (15). Ash for example, in the episode “Be Right Back” from Black Mirror did not know what to do when Martha asked him to hit her, or to jump over the cliff. In Stepford Wives, when Joanna was trying to talk to Bobbie’s cyborg, her speech did not make much sense. And it got worsened when Joanna cut her with the knife. As the viewer can see, none of these cyborgs responded how humans should’ve. They were limited to the amount of information and wires inside of them.

Even Hayles accepts the fact that cyborgs are not perfect and that they will break down eventually. She says, in an artifact a “glitch has to be fixed, a material exhibits unexpected properties, an emergent behavior surfaces- any of these challenges can give rise to a new concept, which results in another generation of artifact, which leads to the development of still other concepts” (15). Yes, cyborgs can be reevaluated and improved, but they will always need a human being with reasoning and human intelligence to fix them, just like in R.U.R, for example. The cyborgs took over, but they could not reproduce themselves without human help. Or just like in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. The androids were taking over, but who was the master mind behind them? The Rosen Association, which was basically one person, Mr. Rosen, who was indeed a human. We are indeed, immersed in virtuality, we are posthumans handling cyborgs.

It is true though and I completely agree with Hayles, that we are characterized by a seamless connection between humans and intelligent machines. That information itself has become primary and its material form secondary.  “Technical artifacts help to make an information theoretic view a part of everyday life. From ATMs to the Internet, from the morphing programs used in Terminator II  to the sophisticated visualization programs used to guide microsurgeries, information is increasingly perceived as interpenetrating material forms” (19). As I see it, Siri works either on my iPhone or on my Mac. The information and processes she handles goes beyond the type of hardware “she” is being used through.

As stated earlier, we are living in a world full of technology, were any simple task is completed with turning on and off a simple apparatus, artifact or so called cyborg. I agree with Hayles in the sense that we are becoming one with technology, we are extending our bodies and minds with the help of other artifacts that are not human, but we remain humans. We are living in a world were we are creating intelligent machines, but machines who still need humans to get them fixed, to keep them moving, to keep improving them. Authors from books and shows basically suggest that without humans there are no cyborgs.

References:

Hayles, Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. The University of Chicago Press. 1999.