Reading (w/) the Digital Human Tentative Syllabus

Course Description
The goal of this course is to examine, challenge, and dissect the word “human” and the terms and conditions under which we (as a society) use this word. We will attempt to deconstruct “human” by discussion of what it means to be “human,” especially through our exploration of the “human” within common (though perhaps misapplied) dichotomies (i.e., human vs. machine, real vs. digital, human vs. environment). As the name of the course suggests, we will not only be attempting to “read with the digital human,” gauging how we should understand our increasingly digitized environment and the issues that come with it (for example, planned obsolescence, gatekeepers of information, movement between realms of physical and digital, generational gaps, etc.), but also to “read the digital human,” investigating how we have been programmed by the technology that we (as a society) have created. In order to achieve these goals, we will read and discuss several texts over the course of the semester, ranging from theoretical essays to short stories. For example, will examine William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer, and discuss how its setting, characters, and themes challenge accepted notions of reality and humanity. In this particular novel, we will look at the ontology of prosthetics insomuch as humans use prosthetics (i.e., drugs, body modification, the Internet) to implement or otherwise alter “reality” and “traditional human experience.” Students will hopefully come away from this course having learned to question and to deconstruct the given; rather than assuming, “I am human,” students should ask themselves, “What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be living? What is reality? Why do these terms matter?”.

Required Reading
Neuromancer by William Gibson
“A Cyborg Manifesto” by Donna Haraway (Available on BB under “Course Materials”)

Justification for Reading
We will be reading “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” by Donna Haraway. In this essay, Haraway criticizes modern social structure (from a feminist standpoint) by arguing that the term “human” is irrelevant because humans have become “cyborgs” (which she defines as, “creatures simultaneously animal and machine, who populate worlds ambiguously natural and crafted”). This reading has been selected because of Haraway’s close examination of dichotomies (human vs. animal, human vs. machine, science fiction vs. reality, etc.), which results in the deconstruction of the term “human,” a term that is called into question by the very nature of this class.

Recommended Reading
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Justification for Recommended Reading
I have chosen to include two novels (Frankenstein and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), which are not required, but which focus on themes relevant to the objections of Reading (w/) the Digital Human. Both of the listed novels question the meaning of the term “human” by depicting technically non-human creatures (Frankenstein’s monster, Replicants), which seem to display a greater scope of human emotions to a greater intensity than actual human characters. These novels beg to know whether it is possible for a creature to be more human than human and whether the accepted system for differentiating human from non-human is intrinsically flawed. I believe that either (or both) of these novels would serve as excellent supplements to Haraway's Cyborg Theory.