haaaaaaaaappy anniversary, cy-boys and cyber-girls!

If you're into this sort of thing, you won't want to miss the celebratory 50 posts about cyborgs in honor of the cyborg's 50th anniversary (since its etymological debut in 1960, in the Clynes and Kline article on space exploration in the now defunct Astronautics journal).

in a future time, children will work together...to build a giant cyborg...

But only if they're really techno-savvy.

from "Mr. H":

"My Superstars are ready to take learning to a whole new level by interacting with technology they have never seen or used before. 

I teach fourth grade in a high poverty inner-city school. A typical day in the life of my fourth graders consists of learning about reading, writing, math, social studies and science. Because the attendance at my school doubled this year due to a nearby school closing down, resources of any kind to teach these subjects are few and far between. 

My students are working hard to overcome the plethora of obstacles that stand in their way of achieving success. These Superstars refuse to let anything get in their way such as not having enough supplies, textbooks and other common teaching tools. 

A LCD projector would go a long way in enhancing our learning experiences. My students love crowding around my laptop computer to look at images that correspond to lessons and they have especially loved getting to work on PowerPoint presentations and iMovies they have created. A LCD projector would allow my students the opportunity to show off their work to their classmates, the school staff and parents. 

Because of your generosity, my students will reach the BIG ACADEMIC GOALS I have set for them this year. Because of your generosity, my students will interact with technology in a way they never have before. Because of your generosity, my students will be a success inside and outside the classroom. Thank you for becoming an honorary member of my Superstars!"

I can only assume that "BIG ACADEMIC GOALS" includes the construction of a giant cyborg. You and I may be too old to help build that future giant cyborg and walk in the robot parade, but we can help these kids do it.

Click here to go to the donation page. And remember that in a future time, these 4th graders will work together...to build, if not a giant cyborg for realz, at least a better world for themselves and their kids. Who might, of course, finally build that giant cyborg. And world peace.

This Sunday on the train back from the city I noticed a poster advertisement in the train car. A lot of times these posters are for TV shows, or just some random product. It's the kind of advertising you stare at mindlessly for awhile before it sinks in that you're staring at it and your brain is absorbing it for no reason--other than that you're on NJ Transit bored out of your skull. This time, though, the poster wasn't for some new Fox show or whatever. It was a poster advertising surrogacy. This piqued my interest because the topic of surrogate motherhood is one of those places where all my various interests intersect: biotechnology, birthing and motherhood, feminism, social justice, genetics and ties of kinship, categories of same and other.

The idea of surrogacy doesn't freak me out. Sure, it's "unnatural" but I don't use that word in the "bad way" that reactionary folks seem to. But the more I consider it, the more uneasy I become about it as a potential social reality. See, I can imagine becoming a surrogate mother as a kind of gift to another woman--someone who longs for a child but for whom that isn't biologically possible in the "natural" way. Especially since--unlike some women--pregnancy was a almost completely positive bodily experience for me. But in that imagining, there are some parameters assumed: that it is my decision, that it is a gift, that it is based upon or itself creates a relationship between me and the mother, that there is no question of a beloved and secure future for the child. And that may indeed be beautiful, but it dreams up an isolated gift economy for the context of this imagined surrogacy. And we don't live in a gift economy. We live in the good ol' US of A.

Coming down from my dream high, it strikes me that the first problem with a widespread practice of surrogacy is the way in which our capitalistic economy has always defined bodies. We "own" our bodies as the irreducible unit of economic exchange: our bodies are what enable us to work, to become wage-earning labor. As we gain skills we increase our value as workers and blah blah. Those without skills--unskilled laborers--have just their bodies to market as their basic exchange. Those who have nothing else to offer the job market in exchange for the necessities of life sell their bodies. Physical laborers. Migrant workers. Prostitutes. Biotech advances don't change that--they simply open up new markets. Selling organs on the black market. Surrogacy seems to fit that pattern all too easily; yet another way women's bodies are particularly exploitable.

That's serious enough, but as I sat on the train and thought about the motives someone might have for entering into surrogacy on both sides, I realized that surrogacy also serves to further our cultural preoccupation with genetic identity. Why would you opt for surrogacy rather than adoption, if not to secure the genetic identity of your offspring? Why would this matter so much? I observe that it does, but I have ceased to understand it. It seems to me at this point that genetic identity is just another arena in which we inscribe the "we are the same so I love you" and "we are not the same so I don't have to care" dynamics that poison so much of our society already.

So despite my technophilia and my fascination with pregnancy, I am becoming more doubtful about the beneficence of surrogacy as a widespread social phenomenon. It is, after all, being advertised on train posters as an economic opportunity in a time of worldwide economic crisis. Surrogacy: biotech's newest twist on the world's oldest profession?

technology's Janus face

Turning off Dora today after getting Clare to the Children's Garden, caught a bit of C-Span's retrospective/re-enaction on abortion debate. The National Right to Life Committee Congregational Liaison and NOW President were going at it. And apparently on the agenda for the Right to life Committee is to push for legislation requiring women to view an ultrasound before granting access to an abortion: the Ultrasound Informed Consent Act.

I've blogged about this proposal before. What strikes me today, however, is how useful technology is rhetorically. Technology is often demonized--in fact, I heard it demonized (abortions are murder, they have the technology to dismember the baby in the womb, you can see it happen on the Internet) right before Technology became the Moral Savior of Misguided Women Seeking Abortions...through the ultrasound.

I've read some stuff here and there about how the introduction of the ultrasound changed how women experience pregnancy and the reality of their baby. Women didn't use to rely on this technology to make their baby seem real to them. It used to be the result of the cues of their body: the subtle changes, the obvious changes, and of course, quickening. But now technology mediates this experience for us, not just in an additional way, but (it seems) in an increasingly definitive way...so much so that right to life advocates are banking on the moral impact of an image on a screen. Morality Check, brought to you by technology.

Or, as the NOW pres pointed out, requiring a woman to view an ultrasound hikes the price of the procedure to double or more...making abortions out of reach for those who are most desperate.