Mark Lewis
Writing 39B
Instructor: Scott Streitfeld
Neuromancer: The Mergence of the Body and Technology
“Late twentieth century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that use to apply to organisms and machines”(Haraway 293) The rapid progression of technological advancements has brought forth a fear of overreliance on technology. This fear is supported by the idea of the elimination of the human body, what many consider is essential for defining one’s self. Those who challenge the mergence of technology and nature believe that the human body’s purpose is to serve as a vessel for a sentience controlling it, however, by this notion, one can argue that any type of body, whether it be human, cyborg, or whole machine, can serve the same purpose and thus brings about the gray area of what makes a human human. The definition of human in this sense can be determined quite simply by the belief that one’s self is human.
William Gibson, the author of Neuromancer, argues that this ambiguity and the fear of body invasion
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Rather than using other words such as cloudy or gray to describe the sky, which corresponds with nature, Gibson states that it is “the color of television” - a technical phrase that is used to describe something natural; the “sky is mediated through technology”(Heuser, xxxix). Gibson introduces the audience to the text with this type of description in order to show nature being combined with technology is an occurrence that is rarely, if ever, proven to be false, and also showing that the “oppositional boundaries between natural and artificial are dissolved”(Heuser,