This, according to the article, is also the main thrust of cyberfeminism, which promotes the idea that “in conjunction with technology, it’s possible to construct your identity, your sexuality, even your gender, just as you please” (Kunzru 1997). One of the most obvious and intrusive realm of technologizing of the human has been genetic engineering, where “we are becoming the objects of our own technological processes” (Simpson 1997) and where “man create[s] man in his own image” (Rohm 2004).
Haraway, and cyberfeminism in general, see the liberating potential of the discourse on the network human in rendering humans malleable and flexible, readily available for continuous, multiple, and ad hoc deconstructions and reconstructions according to some nonessentialist and extranatural code. In the absence of any essentialist natural code, the theoretical question then becomes, What is the external code for the construction of the human? As we will see below, it is the characteristics of the network—as constructed in the digital discourse—that come to dominate the understanding of humans.
N<sub>E</sub>TWORK MIND
What the digital discourse suggests is that the intensity and profound level of interaction between humans and technology may imply that we can no longer speak of interaction, which assumes the independence of two entities and assigns technologies the role of objects and humans the role of subjects. Instead, the digital discourse suggests, we are witnessing the merging of humans and network technology into a singular entity; or to turn this proposition upside down, we see the emergence of a new subjectivity comprised of both humans and technology.<sup>1</sup> This idea receives an eloquent representation in an artwork featured in Wired. The black and white photograph by artist Matthew Pillsbury depicts a quotidian moment in the life of the network human: a dining table inside an apartment, with three laptop computers on top (Brown 2004; Figure 6.2). Both the title of the artwork and the complementary text initially suggest a straightforward depiction of a trivial scene. The work is entitled “Penelope Umbrico and Lila and Rebecca Cohn,” and the text suggests that it “captures a mother and her daughters as they check email, send instant messages, and tend to their virtual pets over the course of a half hour” (Brown 2004).
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Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age