Extensions of Ourselves

After reading the Weizenbaum article, I felt that it is a bit strange for a computer to have a therapeutic program. With the program ELIZA it uses logic that is programmed into it. However, I don't think that a computer can still understand human emotions. Human emotions involve complex and irrational thoughts unlike programmed logic. In the ELIZA doctor program, I think that it does show the powerful processing power of the program because as the young lady would say something like "I need some help, that much seems certain." and the program would respond with something like, "WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO YOU IF YOU GOT SOME HELP." The creator made the program respond like this but the computer will not feel empathy nor would it have human experiences that it could relate to the person in need. For example, the program wouldn't be able to say something like "well in my experiences with relationships in the past, it's very......etc...etc..." The program also lacks human experiences and just functions out of logic and processing power.

With the Cyborg Manifesto article, somehow it reminded me a bit of the Virtually Female article that we read earlier. The article seemed to meld ideas of feminism with cybernetics. I found it to be very complex and it seemed like it talked a lot about women versus the male chauvist society. It seemed to stress a lot on ideas of gender differences like in the Virtually Female article. It also talked about domination from the writer's political and feminist way of thinking. I also found it interesting how the writer talked about women's historical upbringings through the terms of women at home, paid work place, state, school, clinic hospital, and church. How it integrated aspects of cyborgs as a political identity was also a bit strange to relate and connect with.