Machines have progressed in such a way though that the previously formed boundary between human and machine is not clear. No longer is the distinction so clear as: humans=consciousness/subjective experience/natural machines=coded devices/bound to man's limitations/artificial Though...I kind of don't think machines are close to consciousness (have the ability to experience "what it is like" to exist) in these progressive technologies, neither when Haraway was writing nor 2020. This may not be all about consciousness but I still think it is at the root of this distinction. It moreso seems like we are just attributing complexity to machines which are human created nonetheless...e.g. I may just not know enough about machines but how are they "self-developing"? Or is she saying they just seem self-developing and that is enough to have social implications?

lacking vigor, chemically inactive

I would argue that machines only are disturbing and lively when we don't understand them. A really well programmed robot may seem to be alive and think for itself, but in reality it is completely human created, however complex.

Female anatomy can create consciousness, on the other hand through innate processes. Haraway is framing this inability for man to possess the same capability as a sort of jealously. Their pursuit of artificial intelligence can be seen as just an attempt to infringe on such a vital thing that males lack-reproduction.

Haraway here is pointing out the inability to escape one's own consciousness. If man tries to create a robot which is conscious, they are limited by the fact that they are stuck inside their own consciousness. Also the narcissistic hubris of man to think that they could create consciousness, like some kind of god.

The goal of artificial intelligence is more or less to create consciousness, for them to be "autonomous". Though how can this be achieved when they are always inevitably the product of another consciousness?

This settles the materialism/idealism debate because it endows humans/animals with spirit and history where machines lack it? Like Nagel the Nagel idea of "what its like" being conscious experience, though machines can't achieve this without spirit or history. They are only physical. I might be relating things that aren't relevant here though...

progeny=a descendant or the descendants of a person, animal, or plant; offspring. (interesting use of biological language)

Materialism=everything is physical, rooted in physical matter, even our consciousness is just some physical process

Idealism=Reality is constructed by our minds, we can't know reality independent of what our mind tells us it is

In relation to the animal/human and machine distinction, I think she is getting at the question of whether there is something to be said about the "mind" beyond physical capabilities. That experience factors in to the question of reality. Machines can only be physical, programmed. Though, humans have consciousness which filters reality and thus have unique experiences. Clearly, this will lead into debates about AI and all that.

Cybernetics is the study of "regulatory systems, their structures, constraints, and possibilities" (from wikipedia). So pre-Cybernetics would be time when the constraints of machines weren't really considered. Without a study of what the machine can do, they seem to have this mysterious aspect almost like they are haunted. For instance, without understanding the logic behind the constraints of AI to achieve consciousness, it may seem that they are conscious in such a robotic way which can seem alien and thus threatening.

"For Haraway, the Manifesto offered a response to the rising conservatism during the 1980s in the United States at a critical juncture at which feminists, in order to have any real-world significance, had to acknowledge their situatedness within what she terms the "informatics of domination."[3][26] Women were no longer on the outside along a hierarchy of privileged binaries but rather deeply imbued, exploited by and complicit within networked hegemony, and had to form their politics as such.what is this time in history for her?"

From Wikipedia

It seems like a major critique of Haraway is this grouping of everyones cyborg experiences and experiences with technology in the modern world into one big category...obviously leads to problems acknowledging socioeconomic difference.

Sofoulis quoting Muller: "I am very weary of making these celebratory gyno-social links as in: Ooowww look at us girlies we're all digital divas whether we're slaving away in a chip factory or whether we're suffering from rep. strain injury or carpal tunnel syndrome. This makes me think of 70s sisterhood feminism... before we start jumping around with terms like 'virtual sisterhood,' we should be sensitive to just how inclusive that sisterhood is"

Sofoulis points out that she does not interpret Haraway as lumping all hybrids into the same category of "monster" and not all hybrids are cyborgs.

"My own reading of Haraway understands the emphasis to be not ob hybridity as such, but on the specificity of hybrid forms that arise in particular situations. Frankenstein's creation, for example, could be described as a monstrous fabricated "chimera" but it is not a cyborg. It belongs on the left side of the chart…" (63)

She goes on to say that the difference is that Frankenstein's monster is not a cyborg because it was about finding the secrets of life to create a new man, not commodifying the nature of an already existing being.

I'm not totally clear on this association of underemployment with femininity

?

Seems like she is pointing to the limits of language itself in allowing for a society without categorization.

??? Is she saying that miniaturization is dangerous because we can't identify when technology is present and thus take it for granted, like God?

Putting biological and technological determinism against one another implies that they are different...so how is she defining technology in this essay? especially considering what we talked about in class a while ago, that technology isn't necessarily separate from biology.

She writes of the cyborg as being apart from categories/traditions/family...so what are the origins of the cyborg's identity then? Or is it that they don't have an identity?

This reminds me of the story from Plato's symposium about the world beginning with everyone having another human attached to them until Zeus cut them in two.

How does pleasure factor in to this discussion? Is she saying that the cyborg represents a lack of categorization and categorization is what causes the aforementioned "traditions" so we should embrace the cyborg?