One idea I drew from Weizenbaum’s reading which correlates with the class discussion is the invention of the ELIZA program and its relation to Haraway’s notion of the animal-human vs. machine paradigm. ELIZA, in the most literal sense, is a human therapist in machine form, and therefore could be classified as a cyborg which Haraway highlights extensively. I thought it was amusing how vast amounts of people formed emotional bonds to a virtual “therapist” which simply relayed back fragments of their problems in the form of a question. This begs a question we touched on last class: what if our attachment with cyborgs was as deep as our relationships with humans? As Chris mentioned in class (and provided a wonderful analogy using Giga-pets), I believe this idea could be catastrophic to the human race. I see traces of this powerful bond with cyborgs, for example, in the highly addicted gamers who play the computer smash hit World of Warcraft. I have several friends who spend nearly eight hours a day immersed in this virtual world and are psychologically attached to their characters. I hear of players give up hobbies they love, alter their schedules around the game, lose contact with friends, drop and of school, and become emotionally unstable simply to achieve a higher level or gain some new armor for their highly coveted cybernetic character.

Weizenbaum makes an ironic statement: “…when in the deepest sense man has ceased to believe in—let along to trust—his own autonomy, he has begun to rely on autonomous machines.” This certainly applies to the virtual gaming engine, World of Warcraft, and the dangerous zone that the human race is leaning towards implied in the Haraway article. I certainly became fearful in our class discussion because a cybernetic world poses the threat of permanently altering human relationships and skewing our bonds of communication indefinitely. It also brings an undesirable sense of artificiality within the interactions of mankind that I would love to avoid if at all possible.