Viewing vs. Seeing in Asimov's "Naked Sun" and The Social Fetus

As an undergrad, I took a Science Fiction class from a completely awesome professor who would allow his mind to be blown repeatedly in front of the class while he taught us books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, 2001: A Space Odessy, and Paradise Lost.  "Ahhhh!!!!" he's say, " I know nothing man!  These guys are thinking of stuff NO ONE HAS EVER THOUGHT OF BEFORE!  They are imagining new ways of thinking, and technology that does not exist yet.  They are making forecasts and predictions, and some of them are coming true." (Not a direct quote, but pretty close :) ). 

So, yeah, Science Fiction is my bag.  If a good meaty sci fi novel comes my way I dig my teeth into it like nothing else, and try and pinpoint the spots where the author is imagining things no one has ever thought of before.

In "The Naked Sun"  I was blown away, not by Asimov's excellent discussion of robots, but by his discussion of "trimensional images" and the difference between "viewing" and "seeing". 

Okay, so in Asimov's time, there were obviously such things as movies and television.  But Asimov envisioned a society where EVERY form of communication was carried out by viewing people through trimensional images; in fact people in the novel from the planet Solaria had nervous breakdowns when they SAW people as opposed to VIEWING them. 

Instantly my mind jumped to the metaphorical cyborg, a person comfortable with themselves when viewed or characterized through media.  And I thought of webcams.  We may not have perfected 3-D imaging without a screen yet, but many people view others on the computer while being hundreds of miles away from them. 

Asimov's Solaria is a bit of a dystopia in the sense that it is an insular society where physical contact is distasteful.  But so far in our society, "viewing" is more of a positive thing, it connects families who haven't seen each other in a while.

And later, when I was reading an article about how baby sonograms are shaping the way both moms and physicians think about healthcare and their unborn babies, I came across this passage:

"The real time fetus is a social fetus, available for public viewing and commentary at a much earlier stage than the moment of quickening, which used to stand for its entry into the world beyond the mother's belly."  (Rapp 38)

All right, so I'm a mom, so my view here is a little biased (I do agree with the rest of the article, that it may cause the baby-to-be to be institutionalized a little early), but I love this idea that even before it's born, the fetus of the child becomes a social being to the parents.  When I saw my son on the sonogram for the first time he was sucking his thumb, and from that point on he's always been a little busy beaver to me.

Maternal gushing aside, I think that the important thought behind all this is that in our society today, viewing is still a mostly positive thing.  We don't necessarily use it to the detriment of our personal relationships, but to enhance the ones we already have and form new ones with people we may not have known otherwise.  We can even use it to "view" a person who hasn't been born yet. 

But can we keep the boundaries this clear cut?  I can kind of imagine a time in the future where viewing and seeing becomes almost interchangeable; when you're walking down the street, brace yourself to bump into someone and then walk through them instead.  Even that's not strictly a dystopian view though, interchanging viewing with seeing still means seeing.  I suppose the dystopian bit of it would only happen if viewing became dominant.  Or maybe it wouldn't be necessarily dystopian, but sterile, and sterility seems somewhat boring to me...  

Maybe I should just stop labeling :). 


Asimov, Isaac.  The Naked Sun.  Bantam Books: New York, 1965.

Rapp, Rayna.  Real Time Fetus.  Cyborgs and Citadels.  Ed. Gary Lee Downey and Joseph Dumit.  School of American Research: Santa Fe, 1997.

Ghost in the Shell: Blurring Boundaries (Even more)

Okay, I haven't done this in a while, but I've still been reading, in particular I've been reading "How We Became Posthuman" by N. Katherine Hayles, and Mein Gott!  What a read that is.  I'm still not done because in every single paragraph is new scientific/psychological/anthropological/literary theory that is so deep and thick that it's like reading through molasses.  After I assimilate the knowledge she has to offer, I have a feeling a lot of stuff is going to start clicking into place, the most important of which is that the lines between metaphorical and literal cyborgs blur even more, and also the lines between robot/and cyborg blur even more, and we start understanding individuality and identity in this postmodern age as some murky grey soup

Oh, this is hard to articulate.  But I'm going to focus on one thing right now, which is the blurring between the robot and cyborg.  I think this is important because there are so many representations of robots: that is primarily mechanical and technological based "life", that it is just as important to consider the implications of the robot/cyborg blurring as the human/cyborg blurring.  Which brings us to "Ghost in the Shell".

In "Ghost in the Shell" the main character, the Major, is a primarily cyborg character, artificially constructed.  Throughout the movie, she is approached by the Puppet Master, a being constructed by information from networks.  Both these people are non-human; the Major is so ridden with technological enhancements and implants that she might as well be what the puppet master is, a creature constructed primarily of information.  At the end of the movie, these two being merge to create a new being, even more inhuman than their previous state... but at the same time closer to living.  As far as I can gather, their sentience increases with their merging.  Though I have to admit, I'm going to need to do some rewatching of that movie to fully understand the implications.

This got me to thinking about robots.  Now, I like robots anyway; some of my best (fictional) friends were once robots.  But it lead me to consider the opposing side of the cyborg... at what point does the cyborg stop being primarily human and start becoming primarily robotic?  Hayles discusses this a lot in her book, considering what makes up sentience and identity and discussing how a being that one may consider unalive can become sentient. 


This post has more questions then answers.  If a sentient robot has one organic element (such as, say, artificially grown flesh), does that make it a cyborg?  Can a person use enough technology that the technology begins to take over the thought processes and the person becomes more robot than human, even though he or she is a metaphorical cyborg?  Would robotic 'personalities' identity forming, or just a 'slip case' for a Data-like interior?

I've decided to read Asimov's robot series to gain some more insight on robot theory.  While the merging of flesh and technology is important, the beginning of these considerations, I think, lies in the imaginative ideas of science fiction writers who considered Robots.

Moment of insight:  Frankenstein is a cyborg.   I hadn't thought of it that way.  How cool is that??