Author: Zoe C.

How Janelle’s work is inspired by Haraway

Zoe C.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

In the 1980s, Donna Haraway’s cyborg manifesto challenges normal societal ideals about gender identity and the line between a human and a machine. Now, when we get into the year like 2018, Janelle Monáe’s dirty computer helps bring these things to life in the modern day. Her album is a mix of Afrofuturism, being queer, and rebelling against an oppressive system. Both of these works explore the idea of breaking down these super strict categories of identity, and they both use the cyborg as a metaphor to betray this message. Cyborg represents a machine and an organism hybrid, which rejects the usual classifications of gender, sexuality, and humanity. Haraway’s cyborg insists on gender fluidity, where identity can be constructed by yourself, similar to non-binary and today’s age. In Computer, Monet presents a dystopian world where those who don’t conform to the norms of society are labeled as dirty. They are dirty computers and outsiders who are looked down upon because of their queerness and their refusal to fit into what society says is correct. But they can erase their refusal or be cleaned when they reclaim their identity, similar to Haraway’s cyborg, which is the change in our categorization. Monaé’s character, Jane 57821, moves through the futuristic world that is filled with control, surveillance, and punishment her songs, like Pynk and Django Jane, touch on themes of being gender fluid and defying normal gender roles. The album is a celebration of being queer and expressing your freedom while rejecting the norms that society expects you to live by. This is similar to the ideas that Haraway describes in her work. Haraway sees the cyborg as a metaphor for blended identities, while Monet shows how the blending occurs in the real world. There is a mix of race, gender, and sexuality that becomes the forefront of liberation. In both works, technology is a crucial component. Haraway sees technology as a tool for breaking down the oppressive system and blurring the lines of identity in the traditional sense. At the same time, Monet uses literal and symbolic representations of freedom and control. The album is a manifesto that calls for the same kind of post-gender post-race that Haraway envisions. Her album is an anthem for marginalized communities that urges listeners to embrace their differences and rebel against the control society that we live in.  

Do you like our owl?

Zoe C.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Both Blade Runner and Neuromancer depict very different dystopian cities that serve as a significant backdrop to the theme of their stories this backdrop is characterized by bright LED lights and super tall skyscrapers in an effortless blend of high-tech and lowlife elements. The visuals and narrative portrayed our pillar of the cyberpunk genre where there is a possibility for technology so advanced to exist simultaneously as a collapsing society. In Blade Runner, the vision of Los Angeles in 2019 is it gloomy rainy metropolitan area that is overpowered by towering skyscrapers huge billboards, and LED-lit streets. The city is a good representation of a cyberpunk society this is a place where wealth and technological advancements our only in possession of a few while the rest of the population lives in close quarters with a poor quality of life there is a very big contrast between those who reside in the Super tall towers and those who find themselves making ends meet below the neon lights. There are robots that are used for labor that somewhat resemble humans but this represents the line between technology’s ability to serve humanity but also use it as a tool of control and exploitation. From Neuromancer, the urban sprawl is chaotic and dense where advanced technology coexists with crime and a struggling society. This setting is a place where advanced technology cyberspace is the norm while the streets are raging with poverty and crime in desperation. The protagonist of the novel works within the digital realm of cyberspace. This is his opportunity to feel like he is escaping his reality. The novel emphasizes the difference between the high-tech world and the virtual realm that the character can escape to. His main goal is to escape the streets that are filled with drug addiction violence and crime. Both of these works use the setting to explore the impact of corporate technological dominance and how if technology is left unregulated it can significantly alter a society. In Neuromancer the mega-corporations and powerful AI control most of the infrastructure of technology which leaves little room for human autonomy. In both cities the theme embodies a dystopian future that is envisioned by the creator the difference between the neon-lit wonders versus decaying streets in poverty aims to capture the cyberpunk genre where technology is shadowed by societal collapse.

Blurring the Boundaries

Zoe C.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

In cyberpunk literature the theme of eliminating boundaries that try to define humanity. This is increasingly relevant in sci-fi and AI concepts that blur the lines between humans and machines. In recent years we’ve seen a huge shift in the ways we interact with AI technologies and create projects. The change in boundary covers many different domains in the writing, music, and visual arts. MidJourney and Stable Diffusion have been brought to light which can create original music and artwork based on small simple paragraph prompts that we present. Chat GPT and others are software that can produce human-like responses to simple paragraph prompts. AI software is producing very similar human responses and can even pass for humans in specific styles. In today’s world, we have seen AI projects that have won awards and easily passed for human pieces. Many factors have come together to eliminate the boundary like advances in machine learning specifically in generative models and neural networks which have improved AI’s ability to understand the human content it is given and generate answers to those human prompts. major tech companies and startups have put a lot of time into developing AI tools. There are many questions we may have after dealing with this shifting boundary. Questions like how do we define the human aspects of these attempts to blur the boundary? How do we understand AI as it is constantly advancing in ways humans cannot keep up with? As we continue to blur lines between AI and human creativity this is an example of how the boundaries that were already created are changing in ways similar to the cyberpunk fiction genre. And, as we move forward it will be important for humans to pay attention and navigate these changes thoughtfully so that we prepare the AI potential while keeping humans human.