You know, the more I think about it, the more I like Haraway.
I have a cellphone. Heck, I need a cellphone. It’s my land line down in Lethbridge, while I’m attending University. I didn’t get a cellphone until just over 2 years ago, because I never really needed it. But, like everyone else, I tend to anthropomorphize my cell phone. My cell doesn’t run out of battery power, it “dies”. We also tend to anthropomorphize animals, especially domestic cats and dogs. Many people see them as “little people”: We engage in “baby talk” at them like we do at children (“Who’s a good doggie!?” we ask in a high pitched voice, like the poor beast will reply, “Me. I’m the good doggie.”), we by them clothes. Hell, there are plenty of dogs living on this earth that are eating better then many human beings. But I digress.
Haraway mentions “companion species”, a symbiotic relationship between two beings. Now, the cell phone, or any other ICT, doesn’t really slip into the realm of biological being. But, we as social beings do perceive a relationship between us and the technology we utilize. We may not coo at them, but we certainly scream at them when they aren’t working like they should (As if the poor cell phone will reply, “Oh, I’m sorry…. my mind drifted. Here is your friend’s phone number”).
I think Haraway’s model of companion species is very apt. Maybe not on an absolute scale, but certainly on a perceptional scale. I don’t know if cell phones are symbiotic in a scientific, biological sense, but they certainly are in a human interactionist sense.
