What do words mean when they are disembodied? Allison Muri carries this discussion further as she considers The Visible Human Project. This project involved repeatedly photographing thin cross–sections of male and female cadavers to produce a complete anatomical catalogue of the human body which can now be viewed online as 'pages.' She draws an obvious correspondence to the Human Genome Project, which appears to have reduced humanity to text and lends itself well to being indexed and marked up as hypertext.
Will we one day be able to do the same thing with our souls, reducing the foundations of our identities to code that can be digitally warehoused and transferred through ethernet? Muri neatly draws in the earlier discussions regarding the shift from illuminated manuscript to printing press. Citing Umberto Eco, she suggests that the shift may have been problematic for the church, not because it involved an adjustment to a new medium, but because the 'cathedral' lost some of its authority as gatekeeper of knowledge to an increasingly secular press. In the same way, perhaps our 'cathedral' is losing authority. The modern concept of human consciousness or personal identity, as represented by the paper page, is giving way to a 'secular' electronic arbiter of knowledge.
Again, in the silence, we find ourselves drawing a conclusion which is not so surprising after all: the challenge we face is not about adjusting to new ways and new ideas; it is about the age–old struggle for power.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States. Nice work!