The third advertisement takes the immersion of humans and technology one step further. In contrast to the previous advertisements, where the camera is featured front and center, in this advertisement the camera seems to be missing from the scene altogether. Instead, a woman’s face overflows the page, dominating the scene. Her face is flooded with a cool, bright blue light, which diminishes much of her “humanness” and gives her a semihuman (and perhaps semi–science fictional) look. A closer look into her eyes—the most expressive and revealing elements in the face, the “gateways to the soul”—reveals that they are actually “made of” digital cameras. The slogan for this advertisement reads, “Change the way you see the world” (Sony 1999a), which imbue the digital camera with the ability of “seeing.”
HUMANIZING TECHNO<sub>L</sub>OGY<sub>,</sub> TECHNO<sub>L</sub>OGIZING HUMANS
By focusing on the technological, visual skill of humans, what these advertisements are doing, to a greater or lesser degree, is to flatten out and diminish the distinctions between humans and technology. Digital cameras are perceived as seeing organs to the same extent that humans are seen as organic cameras. The very distinction between organic and synthetic, nature and culture, created and manufactured—in short, between instruments and technology on the one hand and humans on the other hand—is diminished by focusing on the instrumental and technical aspect of the human body.
The digital discourse positions humans and technology on the same plane, hence lubricating, as it were, the channels of transferability and commensurability between them. An advertisement for Sony further exemplifies this point. The advertisement features four sequential fullpage images. The first features a blue-lit woman’s face with camera eyes, and the text reads “see it.” The next two images follow the visual style of the first. In the second image components from an audio device are grafted onto a woman’s face, and the text reads “hear it.” And in the third, the back of a human’s head is adorned by a slot into which a memory card is inserted, and the text reads “think it.” The fourth page resolves the mystery of the preceding hybrids by exclaiming “stick it,” featuring various information technology gadgets (Sony 1999b). This advertisement admittedly sells memory cards and electronic equipment, but it also propagates an idea: that the richness of humans’ senses, experiences, and intellect can be easily transported and recreated with information technology;
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