2) Steve Mann's concept of opposing camera surveillance with "Sousveillance" is described as a form of “reflectionism”. What is meant by this?
Reflectionism as described by Steve Mann is a philosophy for using technology to mirror and confront bureaucratic organizations. It is intended to uncover and put into view the privileged place within society these organizations that do surveillance have within society. It’s a way of using the tools against the organization.
3) In the section of "Sousveillance" called "Performance Two" Steve Mann describes how wearing his concealed device becomes more complex when used in what type of spaces?
The experiment becomes more complex when wearing the device in semi-public, highly surveilled places like shopping malls. More objections become raised and the playfulness is lost.
4) The final paragraph sums up what Mann considers the benefits of "sousveillance" and "coveillance". What are they?
Mann Believes that Sousveillance and Coveillance are self-powering for people within our society. He sees it as a way to take back the social control that surveillance has put on the people. It’s almost a way of creating a community through computer networks and give people a new voice.
5) In William J Mitchell's 1995 book "City of Bits" in the chapter "Cyborg Citizens", he puts forth the idea that electronic organs as they shrink and become more part of the body will eventually resemble what types of familiar items?
Mitchell things that “electronic organs” or devices we are constantly using, will become more like clothing, soft, wearable items that contour to our bodies.
6) From the same book/chapter, list two of the things that a vehicle that 'knows where it is' might afford the driver & passengers.
Other than just giving you maps and directions to specific places like gas stations and hotels, it could give you highlights on local history and agriculture. It could offer information specifically pertaining to you.
7) Mitchell tells the story of Samuel Morse's first Washington-to-Baltimore telegraph message. What was it?
What hath god wrought?
8) Donna Harroway in "A Cyborg Manifesto" argues that women should take the "battle to the border". What does she say are the stakes in this border war?
Harroway says the stakes in the border war are the territories of production, reproduction, and imagination.
9) Harroway posits the notion that:
"We require regeneration, not rebirth, and the possibilities for our reconstitution include the utopian dream". What is this dream?
The dream is of hope for a world without gender, or gender inequalities.
10) Many have argued that 'we are already cyborgs' as we use devices such as glasses to improve our vision, bikes to extend the mobility function of our legs/bodies etc, computers and networks to extend the nervous system etc. What do you think? Are we cyborgs?
The definition of cyborg changes from source to source. The dictionary definition is “ a fictional or hypothetical person whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal human limitations.” If this is the case, then no living person could ever be a cyborg. Because the fictional and hypothetical are never concrete. But Wikipedia, which I think of as the commonly use definition of the mass populous, sets a cyborg as any “being with both biological and artificial parts.” This would make anyone with pace makers, artificial knees/hips, any metal plates/bolts or even external artificial parts a cyborg. In the world today, I know no person without extensions to their body, without glasses/contacts, without constantly carrying a cell phone that they feel is a part of them. When I think of modern day cyborgs I think of my father, who has a prosthetic leg, metal plates in his cheeks and on his skull holding his bones together. This is in essence what we have become. And as time progresses, technology will advance. Instead of waiting on a donor list for a lung, kidney, or heart, one will be engineered and built just for you, completing the cyborg human.
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