The erotic ontology of cyberspace

A summary of:
Heim, M. 1991. The erotic ontology of cyberspace. In Cyberspace: First Steps, M. Benedikt, Ed. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 59-80.

In this chapter, Heim describes the way in which cyberspace lures us in with its “erotic ontology,” i.e. the way it is enveloped in an aura of pleasure. We are, as a result, blinded to the more nefarious side of the Internet; e.g.: “Unfortunately, what technology gives with one hand, it often takes away with the other. Technology increasingly eliminates direct human interdependence. While our devices give us greater personal autonomy, at the same time they disrupt the familiar networks of direct association. Because our machines automate much of our labor, we have less to do with one another. Association becomes a conscious act of will. Voluntary associations operate with less spontaneity than those sprouted by serendipity. Because machines provide us with the power to flit about the universe, our communities grow more fragile, airy, and ephemeral, even as our connections multiply” (74). This is very insightful. It’s not so much that the Internet is making it more difficult to form communities; but rather its making doing so less important, therefore meaning that fewer of us make the effort to do so.

Heim also discusses the erotic allure of becoming part cyborg ourselves, and warns: “The darker side hides the sinister melding of human and machine. The cyborg or cybernetic organism implies that ht conscious mind steers – the meaning of the Greek kybernetes – our organic life. Organic life energy ceases to initiate our mental gestures. Can we ever be fully present when we live through a surrogate body standing in for us? The stand-in self lacks the vulnerability and fragility of our primary identity. The stand-in self can never fully represent us. The more we mistake the cyberbodies for ourselves, the more the machine twists our selves into the prostheses we are wearing” (74). Gibson’s The View from the Edge: The Cyberpunk Handbook itself states that, “Each time you add a cybernetic enhancement, there’s a corresponding loss of humanity…. Walk carefully. Guard your mind” (20-22; in Heim, 75).

I think that Doctor Who also provides useful fodder in the form of a parable, i.e. the story of the Cybermen. This quote is my favorite, taken from the episode “Age of Steel” (Series 2, Episode 6):

The Doctor: [Looking at a fallen Cyberman] Now, let’s have a look. Know your enemy. Got a logo on the front. Lumic’s turned them into a brand. Heart of steel. But look.
Mrs Moore: Is that flesh?
The Doctor: Hmm. A central nervous system. Artificially grown and then threaded throughout the suit so it responds like a living thing. Well, it is a living thing. Oh, but look. Emotional inhibitor. Stops them feeling anything.
Mrs Moore: But why?
The Doctor: It’s still got a human brain. Imagine its reaction if it could see itself. Realise itself inside this thing. It would go insane.
Mrs Moore: So they cut out the one thing that makes them human.
The Doctor: Because they have to.

In this episode, The Doctor defeats the Cybermen by shutting down all of their emotional inhibitors, causing them to shut down or explode out of horror at what they had become.

This warning (from Heim and from the writers of Doctor Who) doesn’t only apply to the possibility of becoming cyborgs in the Cybermen sense; it is already happening when we are becoming reliant on our technologies to the degree that we can’t function without them (see Carr, 2008). The question we have to ask ourselves is if, when we take a good look at what we have become, we are not going to be horrified at the prison we have caged ourselves in.

Heim also makes this simple statement: “Cyberspace without carefully laid channels of choice may become a waste of space” (78). Yes, because while we are quick to hail cyberspace as the ultimate liberator, we may soon find that there is a great deal less freedom and choice than we imagine as it is defined now. The mission for my PhD, I have come to realize, is about designing real choice for the Internet, i.e. designing real alternatives that do not force people to morph and adapt themselves to the parameters the current Internet prescribes. For example, Heim points out: “The ideal of the simultaneous all-at-once-ness of computerized information access undermines any world that is worth knowing” (80); yet for some of us, we don’t have any real choice about whether or not to go with the times, because not doing so, not being “included” as the Missionaries of the Internet might call it, amounts to falling behind, or even failing to evolve (and getting picked off like a limping gazelle).

Heim concludes with this strange, evocative paragraph: “As we suit up for the exciting future in cyberspace” – note the parallel, again, with the Cybermen analogy – “we must not lose touch with the Zionites, the body people who remain rooted in the energies of the earth. They will nudge us out of our heady reverie in this new layer of reality. They will remind us of the living genesis of cyberspace, of the heartbeat behind the laboratory, of the love that still sprouts amid the broken slag and the rusty shells of oil refineries ‘under the poisoned silver sky’” (80).

Amen.