Week 3 post: Farman and Thrift
1) Now this question may seem a bit tangential, but it is sitting at the back of my mind, so why not? Farman states that “our bodies, our spaces, and our technologies are all formed within culture and subsequently work within the bounds of culture to transform it. Culture is reworked from the inside by embodied interactors designing and repurposing technology. Within this situation, technology often serves as a catalyst for the massive cultural and embodied transformations that come to define an era” (25). If embodiment is so dependent on culture, I wonder what ways that culture becomes present in the crafting of technology to suit cultural needs? Are there particular signifiers of cultures that are so evident that other cultures are able to grasp? For example, take LG and Samsung, Korean companies that dominate both American and Korean markets. The Koreans, however, do not use the android products that they make for Americans (in fact, flip phones are still very popular because they serve their cultural purposes), yet they are able to craft phones for America that utilize American specific gestures.
2) Near the end of his first chapter, Farman mentions, “our embodied engagements with each other are always about meaning being deferred as we interpret words, gestures, clothing, race, gender, sexuality, and the cultural signifiers that are inscribed onto the body. Our sense perceptions here work in tandem with the ways that we read the world around us” (30). If ‘reading the world’ is involved with the ways that we interact with one another, I am curious as to how the evolution of commercial technology is influencing this idea, in particular from the phenomenological perspective. For instance, google glasses and the augmented reality app (I believe thats what it’s called) on phones imbue the physical surroundings with digital data aggregates and information. So, what kind of implications would arise from seeing what brand of shirt someone is wearing or seeing the Wikipedia page pop up of the kind of car they drive up in? Is this merely another extension of the ways we perceive embodied space or is this something else?
3) Thrift notes, “what this article has argued is that such an emancipatory politics of bare life, founded in practices such as contemplation and mysticism, both already exists – and continues to come into existence which is a ‘product of the double investment of the body by space (the information coming from the physical world) and the investment of space by the body” (70). If he is making the case that ‘nature’ is an embodied practice that is dependent on the way our bodies allow it to become significant or meaningful, can we then call digital spaces ‘nature’ as well (or at least put them in the ‘bare life’ category)? Furthermore, if walking is his case study, can the argument be made that exercise in general is modern day mysticism (granted, he mention exercise later, but in terms of consumerism). He kind of nods to this in his discussion on transubstantiation on page 83, but my thoughts seem to drift more to this ‘bare life’ side.