tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8692381608294018617.post2617634823555830974..comments2023-11-05T07:27:43.837-05:00Comments on Narrative and Technology: “Matrix Madness: The Drug of the Disembodiment in Neuromancer” – Taylor Hochuli: Blog Essay #4, Prompt #2Adamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16302919444091859459noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8692381608294018617.post-29847032939260786772013-02-23T09:58:56.067-05:002013-02-23T09:58:56.067-05:00Beginning with addiction is effective. I'm no...Beginning with addiction is effective. I'm not sure about your reading of Dreyfus, though. He doesn't disagree that virtual worlds are attractive - he just thinks they're attractive for problematic and destructive reasons, because they make us retreat from real engagement (risk), rather than pursuing it. Quoting Dreyfus more nimbly is what you needed to either convince me or to reveal that your reading of him is problematic. When you write "This idea of being trapped in the body directly conflicts with the idea that the unique, “emotional and intuitive capacities of [the] body,” that Dreyfus says people can’t live without (pg. 5 Dreyfus, 2009).", you're clearly in treacherous territory - Dreyfus thinks that virtual lives are *failures* not that they don't exist and not that they don't have their attractions.<br /><br />Your discussion of the various ways in which Case rejects the body are quite good and detailed (e.g. - how he understands sex through cyberspace, rather than the other way around, as we might expect!). I don't see in any way, though, how Case's love of this life contradicts Dreyfu's belief that a disembodied life is, in a Heideggarian sense, untrue or inauthentic.<br /><br />"Even if Dreyfus is wrong about ones misery through disembodiment, the drug-like nature of Case and the matrix reminds us that embracing disembodiment too much could pull us away from the reality we survive in." Here's the way I'd explain it: Dreyfus isn't interested in a pleasurable life so much as a good life, and his critique of disembodiment (explicitly invoking Plato, especially) has a lot to do with ethics: can we live a life worth living when disembodied?<br /><br />Personally, I'd argue that your detailed analysis of the drug-like pleasures of cyberspace is very much in line with Dreyfus - it's only a problematic reading of Dreyfus which makes you think otherwise Id' be very interested in seeing a revision of this which would be rooted in a re-reading of Dreyfus...Adamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16302919444091859459noreply@blogger.com