Coyne, from Technoramanticism (Class Reading)

This was the introduction and first chapter of the book. Some very interesting themes emerge. (In no actual order) First, he counters the ideologies of romanticism with those of both rationalism and empiricism, which is interesting because I generally think of the latter two as so different in approach that they encompass pretty much all ways of knowing. But Coyne presents the romanticist notion that both R and E (especially R) are way too convinced that the world is knowable through reason. They have no heart, no imagination. The romantics view is that the world is truly knowable only in these ways. He mentions that empiricist consider to be reality as "what we represent through language" but "for Lacan the real is what resists symbolization" (p. 14). I've always aligned myself with the rationalist, but Coyne has given me some things to think about here.

He relates this to cyberculture (narratives, spaces) in several ways. Some conflicting ideas arise regarding cyberspace: unity and multiplicity, reason and imagination. Clearly, without logical empiricism and highly developed reasoning skills, we would not have been able to invent computers and all those crazy codes that allow people like me to post things like this. So on one level, the whole cyber thing can be viewed from the perspective of reason alone; however, the narratives created and the communities that aggregate defy reason alone on many levels, and resonate more with the romantic imagination. This is where he brings up contrasting notions of the term medieval, the period that precedes and contradicts the Enlightenment, with its pured dedication to reason as humans' ultimate faculty. Medieval has many negative meanings-- I just think of Marsallis Wallace saying, "I'm gonna get Medieval on your ass" in Pulp Fiction. But Coyne cites many people who bring up the more magical side of those times, with carnivals and magicians and locality and stuff like that. Again, we see a synthesis in cyberculture.

He goes on in the first chapter to discuss cyber utopias in narratives. There are a lot of ideas in here, but what sticks out to me are the contradictions again of reason, oppression, hegemony, etc. and imagination, democracy, a return to primal living--what McLuhan says that technology ended. Coyne opens with McLuhan's idea that the written word served to take preliterate cultures out of this tribal state when they were at one with themselves and with nature. Technology (the written word) exiled them from this place. Cyber utopias have this desire it seems almost to return to this pre-technological state, but in the form of a post-technological age. Coyne references Freud and oedipal themes played out in cyber utopian narratives, and makes a nice connection between McLuhan's notion of tribal unity and Freud's notion of the child's desire to return to a state of oneness with the mother.

The contradictions are what stand out to me in this piece: technology as the thing that cast humankind out off the primal garden, but as the thing with potential to bring us back--the global village. The hard reasoning that led to the cyber age, and the imagination and romanticism glorified by the uses of such developments.

Oh, and Coyne brings up Bakhtin, which is interesting. Let's see how much I continue to come across this guy.