Page 185 - Cyberculture and New Media

176 Cyborg Goddesses: The Mainframe Revisited
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In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, the sinking of Pequod, the ship is
an ironic implication over the potential destructiveness of the gains culture
makes in spite of the destruction of nature through time. The name Pequod is
also a reference to the Native Indian tribe, an obvious allusion to matriarchal
rule. Similarly, Rachel, the ship, sets sail in search of its orphans amidst the
rubble of the sinking whaling ship Pequod. On the other hand, Philip K.
Dick’s science fiction work Minority Report, in film depicts a crime
prevention project developed in the United States in a future time. Gifted pre-
cogs detect and warn about crimes expected to take place in the future, which
eventually leads in the incarceration of potential criminals. The most gifted of
the pre-cogs is a woman called Agatha. However the crime prevention
project later proves non-operative, and gets terminated due to innocent
individuals’ detention. The originator of the pre crime system happens to be
another woman scientist. However, her equivocal success as an innovator is a
reminder of that delicate balance the American Civil War contributed to
history. A historical gun presented as a gift to Civil War generals, used as a
prop, at the final scenes of the film, allows contemplation over this theme.
The pre crime system’s boss covers up a crime he commits. In the meanwhile
the protagonist hero (Tom Cruise), his major detective, struggles to clear
himself from being detained as a potential criminal and eliminated from the
scene. Tom Cruise’s discovery of his boss’ crimes leads to the conclusion. A
night of celebration in honor of the pre crime system’s success turns out to be
a public discovery of its failure. The historic gun presented as a gift to the
boss results in its firing and his accidental death. The symbolic use of the gun
is a demonstration for the punishment of abusive uses of science, therefore,
bringing in a closure. The sacrificial twist leaning towards both ends in the
current gender spectrum also reveals on the loss of innocence with the
incorporation of science into nature.
Although Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto indicates a withering
of innocence within the cyborg context, it is possible to detect the opposite.
As a further example of its kind, the movie Ghost in the Shell both challenges
and is supportive of the issue of innocence in the person of major Kusanagi
(Motoko) who is blended within the project 2501, the Puppet Master
emerging as neither of them but a new born into the net which is “vast and
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infinite.” Innocence’s meaning therefore transfers through shifting genders
as mere shells into the ever-expanding net as a ghostly presence.
The shell likeness of genders as feminine and masculine, as vessels
of technology once were carried through the shell-like aspect of the cult of
Cybele, along her multiple facets in Anatolia and the neighboring regions as a
major belief system allowing for the expansion and prosperity of
civilizations. Once sacrificial of the masculine persona, the belief has
evolved. After travelling continents, it has transformed and blended through
time into a global context and slanted to the other side for searches of the