How Have Computers Changed the Way We do Things and Who We Are?

I was really drawn to Bill Nichols “The Work of Culture in the Age if Cyberetic Systems”.

I have always had something of a love-hate relationship with the computer. I have learned about computers and how they worked, and though I consider all these things creative, I would like to have a better sense of what it is I am encountering, how it has changed the way I do things, and who I am. It also has always been my passion to help this younger generation. They have so many temptations and negative information thrown their way that sometimes its hard not to go down that wrong path in real life and online.

Nichols notes how human identity has changed compared to animals, machines and how we have become “cyborgs”; human and machine.

Cybernetic systems make such issues as reality and experience difficult to define. It creates this “awesome feeling of power and control”. Obviously computer technology is influencing these young lives from the moment of when they first enter this world and in ways that they are both conscious and unconscious of. Nichols also notes the influences of cultural and societal choices which can influence new technologies. There is always talk of digital reproduction and intelligent machines. Students in grade school can now read their text books from an iPad. Will the classroom teacher be replaced by a talking box eliminating the need for a few good teachers? But then again digital communication does stimulate face-to-face encounters and ask for immediacy.

Walter Benjamin and Bill Nichols cannot answer these questions fully, but they do much to both problematize and illuminate the process of art and the human encounter with technology. Benjamin argues that art, in terms of both perception and practice, has undergone fundamental changes in Western culture. He makes a distinction between art as ritual and art as exhibition; Nichols builds upon these concepts by adding his notions of art within contemporary “cybernetic” culture. Nichols’ core question becomes: how have social realities been reformed and adjusted by means of electronic communication and computer technology?

The question that now remains is will we as humans become dominated by our own creations as we become more and more like them?"
Discussion question:

1. What are the effects of simulation? Good? Bad?