Our groups experience in ENGL 794 has been filled with a plethora of eye-opening and jaw dropping concepts that for the most part are foreign to us with literature backgrounds.  While we are not completely lost in the realm of Cyberbodies, we have debated and questioned some of the concepts that we have been subjected to.  While we have many thoughts and concerns, the idea of the “cyborg” presented by Donna Haraway and later discussed by Langdon Winner presents us with some challenging obstacles.  Haraway defines cyborg in “A Cyborg Manifesto” as “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism” (516).  Winner adds in his “Resistance is Futile” that cyborgs present a “pervasive blending of nature and artifice” (396).  If one is to understand “machine” and “artifice” to be used interchangeably with “technology” (as the authors themselves tend to do), complications arise.

What exactly constitutes “technology”?  If one uses the distinguishing terms of “hi-tech” and “low-tech”, where is the line drawn between the two?  If “low-tech” is considered the same type of technology that would define a cyborg, have humans been cyborgs all along?  These are merely some of the questions we have asked ourselves and feel need to be defined in order to a fruitful discussion surrounding these issues to take place.  While they may appear elementary at best, the “elusive [and] endlessly beguiling way of writing” (Winner 400) that Haraway and other scholars use in discussing these topics is not only frustrating for us as students trying to grasp these concepts, but also limits the potential for discourse because of such ambiguities.  Perhaps it is our old literature habits that are getting in the way of seeing the ‘big picture’.  Regardless, we will continue to question, discuss, think, and research in hopes that we will come to a better understanding of the concepts we are dealing with in this course.

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