Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 15:01:50 -0500
From: shawn wilbur <swilbur-AT-wcnet.org>
Subject: Re: [Fwd: [CSL]: At Airport Gate, a Cyborg Unplugged]




"steve.devos" wrote:

> Ignoring the cyborg issue which drew out the radical disagreements
> between Shawn, others and myself last year - i was slightly bemused by
> the implication that I read into the below, that the security guards
> in an age, when a singular common spectacle has it that people commit
> suicide and blow up cafes with plastic explosive strapped to their
> bodies, could respond in any other way....
>
> (Obviously my suspician that the first set of security guards who let
> him on the first plane were not doing there job and the second set
> probably were, may not find favour here....)

A question raised in the article was about whether or not it would
become impossible for certain classes of people to travel, because of a
kind of "cyborg profiling." Like most kinds of profiling being deployed
now by the various security machines, this one focuses on the visibly
"other," with that sort of otherness being in and of itself a sort of
offense. Canadian academics are not notoriously likely candidates for
suicide bombings, and this one seems to have come equipped with a
variety of credentials from others, attesting to the nature of the
prosthetics. It seems hard to see how the strip search and electrode
removal is simply a matter of "doing the job," particularly when there
seems to have been a degree of violence involved. On the other hand,
"the job" for the security machine may largely be one of enforcing a
variety of kinds of conformity, of discouraging travel by those it can't
fit into its profiles of safe, loyal, compliant citizens. This sort of
thuggishness is certainly part of what we're being asked to accept in
this newest of world orders. I'm afraid i can't accept its necessity.

-shawn

> steve
>
>
> shawn wilbur wrote:
>
>> "steve.devos" wrote:
>>
>>
>> > Loved this especially in the light of  our cyborg discussions last
>> > year
>> > - cyborgs better travel by bus...
>> >
>> I suspect that the moral of the story is that little, fragile
>> cyborgs had
>> better watch out for big, clumsy ones - like the rapidly growing
>> "security"
>> industry. If we look at the guy with all the weird prostheses and
>> see a
>> "cyborg" but don't see one when we look at the security forces with
>> their
>> x-rays and such, then maybe we need our vision enhanced in some
>> way.The
>> fragility of cyborgs - whether it is they guy who ended up
>> "unplugged" or the
>> now notoriously disfunctional airport security machine - is, or at
>> least ought
>> to be, old news. More than anything this story reminds me of
>> McLuhan's comments
>> about technological "advances" upping the ante generally. At some
>> level, this
>> is just an old story about cops hassling "freaks" in the name of
>> safety and
>> order.
>>
>> -shawn
>>
>>
>> > steve
>> >
>> > March 14, 2002
>> > http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/technology/circuits/14MANN.html
>> >
>>
>>