Cyborgs or Goddesses? Becoming Divine in a Cyber-Feminist Age by Elaine Graham- A Review



Cyborgs or Goddesses? Becoming Divine in a Cyber-Feminist Age by Elaine Graham- A Review

Introduction

This paper presents the review of the article Cyborgs or Goddesses? Becoming Divine in a Cyber-Feminist Age by Elaine Graham in a concise and comprehensive way. First of all let me mention that scholars continue to add to our comprehension of the digital divide's individual-level effects. However, organizational-level and societal-level impacts are less well-known. In particular, insight into organizational effects is warranted (Graham, 1999). Areas such as the diffusion of online services, public policy initiatives directed at bridging the divide at the organizational level, and the contextual environments (i.e., competitive and partnering) that may exacerbate or lessen the disparity are currently under investigation.

Mapping the Posthuman

In this age of DNA computers and artificial intelligence, information is becoming disembodied even as the "bodies" that once carried it vanish into virtuality. While some marvel at these changes, envisioning consciousness downloaded into a computer or humans "beamed" Star Trek-style, others view them with horror, seeing monsters brooding in the machines. In How We Became Posthuman, Elaine Graham s separates hype from fact, investigating the fate of embodiment in an information age.

Elaine Graham relates three interwoven stories: how information lost its body, that is, how it came to be conceptualized as an entity separate from the material forms that carry it; the cultural and technological construction of the cyborg; and the dismantling of the liberal humanist "subject" in cybernetic discourse, along with the emergence of the "posthuman" (Graham, 1999).

Although becoming posthuman can be nightmarish, Elaine Graham shows how it can also be liberating. From the birth of cybernetics to artificial life, How We Became Posthuman provides an indispensable account of how we arrived in our virtual age, and of ...