Intimacy and Technology

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2010:

For the purposes of considering request for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Cwth 2005), and Students Experiencing Academic Disadvantage Policy, academic requirements for this subject are articulated in the Subject Description, Subject Objectives, Generic Skills and Assessment Requirements of this entry.

The University is dedicated to provide support to those with special requirements. Further details on the disability support scheme can be found at the Disability Liaison Unit website : http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/disability/

Intimate Technologies are those that we use to understand ourselves, and that we use to establish and maintain our relations with others. The subject approaches technologies of intimacy through a wide variety of examples and case studies - technologies of modesty and privacy (underwear and bedrooms), technologies of surveillance (CAT scans and bar-codes), communications technologies (love letters and SMS), reproductive technologies (IVF and sheep-gut), technologies that mediate personal identity (the data-body and flesh-fashion), and that mediate social and community relations (swarms and networks). The unifying themes that run through these examples approach technologies of intimacy in terms of their propensity to abstract, attenuate, individuate and discipline our intimate relations, and students are invited to critically assess this argument. In so doing, students will gain a fresh and critical understanding of the ways in which technologies and our lives are intertwined.

A student who has successfully completed this subject will

• understand and critically interpret the major theoretical and philosophical approaches that inform our knowledge of sociotechnical relations.
• demonstrate a critical appreciation of the implications of particular sociotechnologies for self, and for human relations.
• identify, interpret and recount sociotechnical case studies relevant to intimate relations.

A subject reader will be available from the bookshop at the start of semester

Borgmann, Albert, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life , 1984. Feenberg, Andrew, Questioning Technology , London: Routledge, 1999 Gray, Chris (Ed.) The Cyborg Handbook , Routledge, 1995. Haraway, Donna, The Haraway reader, New York : Routledge, 2003 Hayles, Katherine, How we Became Posthuman 1999 Ihde, Don, Technology and the lifeworld : from garden to earth , Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1990. Turkle, Sherry, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet , London: Weidenfel &amp.amp.amp.amp.amp.amp. Nicholson, 1996.

This subject potentially can be taken as a breadth subject component for the following courses:

• Bachelor of Biomedicine
• Bachelor of Commerce
• Bachelor of Environments
• Bachelor of Music
• Bachelor of Science
• Bachelor of Engineering

You should visit learn more about breadth subjects and read the breadth requirements for your degree, and should discuss your choice with your student adviser, before deciding on your subjects.

A student who has successfully completed this subject will:

• form defensible judgements based on a critical evaluation of conflicting arguments.
• develop skills in written and oral communication.
• make appropriate use of primary and secondary sources in mounting an argument.
• conduct independent research.