There are three core cyberculture readings for this block that are going to be important in helping to frame our conversations over the next three weeks. If time allows, do dip into any of the secondary readings that catch your imagination – these resources will also prove helpful if you decide to pursue a cyberculture-themed question for the digital essay. All of the readings can be accessed via the University of Edinburgh library site. The visual methods readings are listed on the Working visually page of this site.
Core reading
Gourlay, L. (2012) Cyborg ontologies and the lecturer’s voice: a posthuman reading of the ‘face-to-face’. Learning, Media and Technology, 37(2). DOI:10.1080/17439884.2012.671773
As a prominent voice within the field of digital education research, you might already have encountered Lesley Gourlay’s work around digital literacies, or the relationship between technologies and learning spaces. In this article she explores how some firmly established understandings of education practice need to be reconsidered in light of the proliferation of digital technologies.
Miller, V. (2011) Chapter 9: The Body and Information Technology In Understanding Digital Culture. London: Sage. (Please access this e-reserve resource via our Moodle site)
Miller’s chapter gives a good introductory overview of some of the key ideas around cyberculture, science fiction, and a blurring of the boundary between the human and machinic. You will find this a useful reading as you select and then view content for around our Cyberculture Film Festival.
Sterne, J. (2006). The historiography of cyberculture in Silver, D. and Massanari, A. (Eds) Critical Cyberculture Studies (pp. 17-28). New York: New York University Press.
Fifteen years after it was written, this essay by Jonathan Sterne continues to offer useful food for thought as we attempt to conceptualise our relationship with emergent technologies. His discussion of what constitutes cyberculture – as a prominent scholar in the field of sound studies he makes the case for sound within the study of cyberculture, for instance – can also usefully inform the choice of artefacts you might include within your gallery space.
Datta, A., & Thomas, A. (2021). Curating# AanaJaana [# ComingGoing]: gendered authorship in the ‘contact zone’ of Delhi’s digital and urban margins. cultural geographies. doi.org/10.1177/1474474021993415
On the surface, it might seem a bit incongruous to the cyborg/cyberculture discussions we are having in this block, but reflect on how this study based in one of New Delhi’s busiest metro stations exploring a form of self-authorship by young women from its digital and urban margins, potentially broadens our perspectives on what cyberculture is, or can be. ‘/#AanaJaana [#ComingGoing] is a metaphor for journeys, communications, connections, associations, interceptions, social networks and individual/collective behaviours, that is curated as women ‘see’ and ‘speak’ with/through their mobile phones.’
Secondary reading
Hand, M. (2008). Hardware to everywhere: narratives of promise and threat in Making digital cultures: access, interactivity and authenticity (pp 15-42). Aldershot: Ashgate.
(Please access this e-reserve resource via our Moodle site)
Haraway, D. (2007). A cyborg manifesto in Bell, D and Kennedy, B.M. (Eds) The cybercultures reader (pp. 34-65). London: Routledge.
(Please access this e-reserve resource via our Moodle site)
Hayles, N.K. (1999). Towards embodied virtuality in How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics (pp. 1-25, 293-297). Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
(Please access this e-reserve resource via our Moodle site)