Artificial Modernity

With our technology advances, America probably thinks itself modern.  However, in art and history, the modern era took place somewhere between the 16th and 18th century, and we are now somewhere in the postmodern.  Now Latour seems to define the modern era as a time when we crossed out God and separated Nature and the Social.  It was possible (necessary) to create a network of connections between the two, but not condoned.  He goes on to say that really these separations are synthetic illusions at best--at least as far as I understand him--because nature influences society (hurricanes, earthquakes, and tidal waves have significant impacts on society) and society influences nature (deforestation displaces animals which causes the animals to migrate elsewhere and ultimately come in contact with humans or our wasteful use of earth's natural resources cause toxic gasses that add to the hole in the ozone layer).  Also, the way in which we understand society depends on tests made to nature while rules of nature are created using experiments in socially constructed laboratories --as was the Boyle-Hobbes examples Latour gave.  On top of this, both spheres are simultaneously created and maintained by language which means that a third sphere of language must be created.  However, language cannot be separated from the former two anymore than the former two can be separated from each other.

In this short film, "Gumdrop," a robot goes through an interview for an acting position.  This robot Gumdrop is conceivably a human-made machine, and yet she has the autonomy, intelligence, communication skills, most of the movement capabilities of a human.  She also has preferences and aspirations that give her a human aura.  Given these features and the fact that she has the ability to succeed and/or fail at being an acting robot, the audience could just about ask whether or not Gumdrop should be considered human.  She looks different and she uses wheels to get from place to place instead of legs, but these are the only known characteristics that separates her from most humans.

I suspect that Gumdrop technically fits in the Social sphere, but her ability to interact with humans as humanly as she does comments on the Nature of human intelligence.  Like in Boyle's vacuum experiments, Gumdrop is a socially created "laboratory" for the experiment of human intelligence and socialization.

As Latour says, we cannot completely purify or "untie the Gordian knot" anymore.  Even Alexander could not succeed in such anymore.
Published 11/27 3:41pm

Edit: I forgot to say the most important part!  I think I had worked out in my head to say this when I started this post yesterday, but then.... Anyway.

The modern vs. nonmodern discussion is much like Plato/Socrates' and Gorgias' debate on truth and justice. Plato took the modern approach and claimed that the two truth and lies as well as justice and injustice were separable things while the rhetoricians thought that what made something just and/or true is that a number of people had to agree upon it.  Moderns say that Gumdrop is not human.  Nonmoderns have to agree that she is or is not human.