Struck

I've been re-reading Donna Haraway's 'Manifesto for Cyborgs' as background for a chapter I'm writing. I was struck by what she had to say about minituarization, and how in some ways it prefigures the widespread diffusioon of mobile technology. I quote: 'The silicon chip is a surface for writing; it is etched in molecular scales disturbed only by atomic noise, the ultimate interference for nuclear scores. Writing, power and technology are old partners in Western stories of the origin of civilization, but minituarization has changed our experience of mechanism. Minituarization has turned out to be about power; small is not so much beautiful as preeminently dangerous, as in cruise missiles. Contrast the TV sets of the 1950s or the news cameras of the 1970s with the TV wristbands or hand-sized video cameras now advertised.' (30)....mobile phones, ipods, tablets...AR. Drones....?