Comments on: Technology: Servitude and slavery, humanising and dehumanising. https://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/mpeters/2015/01/14/technology-servitude-and-slavery-humanising-and-dehumanising/ An education and digital culture site - #MSCEDC 2015 Wed, 11 Mar 2015 04:07:32 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.38 By: Martyn https://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/mpeters/2015/01/14/technology-servitude-and-slavery-humanising-and-dehumanising/#comment-13 Tue, 20 Jan 2015 14:32:09 +0000 http://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/mpeters/?p=28#comment-13 I didn’t see it, but I can imagine that it was present in the film, talking about white robots it reminded me of Wall-E! Wall-E’s love interest Eva is also a sleek white, whilst Wall-E is a kind of pastiche of Short Circuit. If I’m not mistaken, usually black robots are military, dangerous, and destructive, thinking back to portrayals of machines in The Matrix… It would be a really interesting avenue to investigate for film studies. There’s an interesting chapter by Richard Dyer from The Matter of Images about serial killing that investigates the depiction of white serial killers in the cinema and I haven’t had a chance to read it but there’s a whole book called White: Essays on Race and Culture.

]]> By: jknox23 https://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/mpeters/2015/01/14/technology-servitude-and-slavery-humanising-and-dehumanising/#comment-10 Sun, 18 Jan 2015 15:24:47 +0000 http://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/mpeters/?p=28#comment-10 I really like this post Martyn – it’s great to see short reflections on ideas, and the lifestream is definitely intended for this kind of content.

Also, these notions of ‘dehumanising’ activity are really important to raise, and it’s super to see this here. With all the focus on cybercultures, cyborgs and artificial intelligence this week, it might be easy to assume that we’re just reflecting on technology. What you highlight well here is that cyborgs and robots always imply certain ideas about what it means to be human, and that is ultimately their value to cultural studies. Your example of slavery also illustrates how the boundary between ‘human’ and ‘non-human’ has been different in times past.

]]> By: Katherine https://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/mpeters/2015/01/14/technology-servitude-and-slavery-humanising-and-dehumanising/#comment-9 Sun, 18 Jan 2015 00:22:15 +0000 http://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/mpeters/?p=28#comment-9 Thanks for this reflection Martyn. Did you notice in the second film with the cute robots that it was the little white robot who got to go fulfil his dream while the little black robot drove the mouse? That really bothered me when I thought back on it–not just human vs robot enslavement, but within robot ‘societies’.

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