Post by jjmetzger on Mar 23, 2016 3:33:59 GMT
Check this out!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3NYBpYRC-s This is the "social home robot" Jibo.
When I first saw this advertisement a few years ago it got me thinking about Cyborg feminism. Sometimes I think it's hard to conceptualize how robotics/technology can be considered "intimate" the way Haraway describes in The Cyborg Manifesto. Technology is, after all, just circuits and wires. Haraway encourages us to see ourselves as cyborgs, a mixture of human and machine. The reproduction of the cyborg is different than the reproduction of a woman.
Jibo, I think, highlights liminality and intimacy in technological advancements. How do we interact with a machine like Jibo which encourages/welcomes us into intimate space and conversation with an object? What happens when we develop technology to nurture us and our families in such an intimate way? How does it empower us? How does machinary like Jibo put us into a post-human/post-gender social structure?
I know this might seem blasphemous to ask but how is this machine like women - and how are women like this machine?
