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Bodies In and Out of Information: Consumption and Life in the Virtual

Merryman, Walter Emerson
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1404483340

Abstract Details

2014, Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, English/Literature.
This thesis seeks to articulate how subjectivity is produced by particular interfaces of technology and the body. How technology affects the body and a person's sense of self is inherently tied to the value system deploying it. The Playstation 4, for instance, invites its users to think of themselves as some kind of gamer, a label bound to its simultaneous function of consumer. The value interfacing with the Playstation 4 serves is consumption, a practice valuable from the perspective of free market societies. Identifying the perspective built into a technology's interface and utilization is essential because it is that perspective which may come to define the human user. This thesis examines how perspectives of evaluation are built into technology in two chapters. The first is the Playstation 4, with a user interface that gives the gamer more access to the game and gives the game more access to its consumer. The second is Iain M. Banks's science fiction novel Surface Detail. The pairing of these two chapters is intended to give a diverse, albeit intuitive, examination of texts where the interface of the body and technology is a major point of focus. The argument throughout takes a posthumanist perspective, attempting to show that subjectivity is produced by a person's relation with technology and social practices instead of an individual's cognition alone. The introduction begins with a brief discussion of prosthetics as a way in to the question of technology and the body, and ends with a definition of "posthuman subjectivity." The readings of the texts produce a somewhat surprising conclusion: that the Playstation 4 does more to stretch the boundaries of subjectivity than the text of Banks's novel, just going to show that the posthuman is not what comes after the human, but a condition of being human.
Ellen Berry (Advisor)
Piya Pal-Lapinski (Committee Member)
Edgar Landgraf (Committee Member)
94 p.
Literature; Technology
Playstation; posthumanism; posthuman subjectivity; science fiction; technology; Iain M Banks

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Merryman, W. E. (2014). Bodies In and Out of Information: Consumption and Life in the Virtual [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1404483340

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Merryman, Walter. Bodies In and Out of Information: Consumption and Life in the Virtual. 2014. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1404483340.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Merryman, Walter. "Bodies In and Out of Information: Consumption and Life in the Virtual." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1404483340

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1404483340
525
© 2014, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.