Ici THK — Cyberfeminism

About the Author

Deborah Lupton worked already in 1993 on the analogy - between the communication of technology threats and of - diseases, she presents us the analogy that is voluntary - made between the computer and the body in a hygienic - society where we tend to rely on centralized organisation - to desinfect and sanitize our world. Since then the issue - of scale and control.

Sources

- Panic computing: The viral metaphor and computer technology, - Cultural Studies, 8:3, pp.556—568, ISSN 0950-2386

Panic computing: The viral metaphor and computer technology

- -

The unproblematic use of the term 'virus' applied to - technological artefacts, inspire ponderings on the wider - implications of the viral metaphor. The choice of - phraseology in textual accounts and talk, the discursive - devices used, recurrent lexical patterns in describing - things, events, groups or people is revealing of the - latent ideological layer of meaning of such - communications (van Dijk, 1990; Fowler, 1991). In - particular, the intertextuality, or the ways in which - texts selectively draw upon other texts, other cultural - forms and discourses to create meaning, indicates the - political and ideological functions of texts and delimits - the boundaries within which topics may be discussed - (Fairclough, 1992; Astroff and Nyberg, 1992). *The - nomination of a type of computer technology malfunction - as a 'virus'* is a highly significant and symbolic - linguistic choice of metaphor, used to make certain - connections between otherwise unassociated subjects and - objects, to give meaning to unfamiliar events, to render - abstract feelings and intangible processes concrete. In - doing so, the metaphor shapes perception, identity and - experience, going beyond the original association by - evoking a host of multiple meanings (Clatts and Mutchler, - 1989: 106-7). As Geertz has argued, '[i]n metaphor one - has.., a stratification of meaning, in which an - incongruity of sense on one level produces an influx of - significance on another' (1973: 210).

Viruses and the computer corpus

- -

The present analysis examines in detail the - stratification of meaning evident in the widespread and - largely unquestioned adoption of the viral metaphor to - describe computer technology malfunction in popular - texts. It is argued that the viral metaphor used in the - context of computer technology draws upon a constellation - of discourses concerning body boundaries, erotic - pleasure, morality, invasion, disease and destruction. In - what follows, the meanings of the term 'virus' in the - medical context, the symbiotic relationship between body - and computer metaphorical systems, the symbolic danger of - viruses, the seductiveness of the human/computer, - Self/Other relationship and the cultural crisis around - issues of bodies, technologies and sexualities at the fin - de millénnium are discussed to illuminate the ambivalent - relationship of humans with computer technology in late - capitalist societies.

Morality and viral politics

- -

There are no "good" Germs or 'normal Germs; all Germs are - bad' (Helman, 1978: 118-19). To counter this attack, as - Cindy Patton points out, bodies are visualized as being - 'filled with tiny defending armies whose mission [is] to - return the "self" to the precarious balance of health' - (Patton, 1990: 60). The immune system is commonly - described in popular and medical texts as mounting a - 'defence' or 'siege' against 'murderous' viruses or - bacteria which are 'fought', 'attacked' or 'killed' by - white blood cells, drugs or surgical procedures (Martin, - 1990; Montgomery, 1991). This military discourse, - redolent with images of physical aggression, has become - routine and standardized to the point where its - metaphorical origins are erased: it is now a 'dead' - metaphor (Montgomery, 1991: 350).

The seduction and terror of cyberspace

The viral metaphor has been adopted in computing - terminology to express the meanings of rapid spread and - invisible invasion of an entity that is able to reproduce - itself and causes malfunctioning on the systemic - level. It is telling that this alternative use has been - so readily accepted that at least one Australian medical - journal has featured articles on computer viruses devoted - to making explicit the similarities between biological - viruses and computer viruses (Dawes, 1992a, 1992b). Just - as the immune system is described in terms of military - imagery, popular accounts of computer viruses commonly - employ the terminology of war to conceptualize the - struggle between technological order and chaos. [....] - Ways of describing computer technology have both created - new terminology which has entered the language and have - drawn upon elements of older, more established lexical - systems. In particular, drawing upon the centuries-old - body/machine discourse, there has developed a symbiotic - metaphorical relationship between computers and humans, - in which computers have been anthropomorphized while - humans have been portrayed as 'organic computers' - (Berman, 1989: 7).The immune system is also commonly - described as an information-processing system, - communicating by means of hormones. By this imagery, - there occurs 'the transformation of the human subject - into an object, a repository, or else a collision site, - for various types of detectable and useable information' - (Montgomery, 1991: 383). Indeed, according to Haraway, - bodies have conceptually become cyborgs - (cyberneticorganisms), that is, 'techno-organic, humanoid - hybrids' (Haraway, 1990:21), or compounds of machine and - body theorized in terms of communications, for which - disease may be conceptualized as 'a subspecies of - information malfunction or communications pathology' - (Haraway, 1989: 15).

The viral metaphor and technophobia

At the fin de millénnium, the body is a site of toxicity, - contamination and catastrophe, subject to and needful of - a high degree of surveillance and control. Kroker and - Kroker (1988:10 ff.) term the contemporary obsession - with clean bodily fluids as 'Body McCarthyism', an - hysterical new temperance movement. [...] 'Panic - Computing' invokes '[t]he underlying moral imperative - ... You can't trust your best friend's software any more - than you can trust his or her bodily fluids - safe - software or no software at all!' (Ross, 1991: 108). The - insertion of an 'infected' disk, that is a 'carrier' of - corruption, spells disaster for the integrity of the - computer corpus. Just as people are exhorted to grill - their sexual partners for details of their past intimate - lives, so as to be 'sure and safe' before proceeding to - exchange bodily fluids, so they are warned to verify the - source and safety of the computer disks they insert into - their PCs (Sontag, 1989: 167).