In the summer of 2010 my wife, daughter and I spent 2 weeks touring in Scotland. It was a wonderful trip and just having received a new camera I took hundreds of photos. When we returned, I took the memory card to the store to develop some pictures, but somewhere between the house and the store the memory card was lost. I was devastated… photos of the entire trip; video of my daughter crawling for the first time… gone. While it still pains me at the loss, I can console myself with the memories I have of the fun trip we took as a family. I have since taken many more pictures of my daughter, and no doubt we will return to Scotland for another visit some time in the future, but the physical record of that particular trip no longer exists.

What occurred to me after reading your post and being reminded of my own loss, is how would a cyborg react? I have a fond recollection of my trip. I have an emotional connection to the memories of the events. Does a cyborg feel an emotional connection to data? If the data is lost or removed, would they even be aware of the loss? Can they feel emotional attachment to something which no longer exists in their memory banks? Would it be as if it never existed, or would some aspect of the experience linger?

As you said, emotions could be the difference between humans and animals but is that also the potential difference between the post-human and the cyborg? Do our emotional connections separate us from the non-human? Is recognizing the connections we have and the attachments we form to the physical world part of the process of becoming post-human?

Learning the language is interesting because it’s not only about mastering the vocab and grammar structures but also about the culture, contextualised and personalised experience, shown by your preference for immersion and also discussed by Neil in his post.

If in a broad sense posthumanism is about blurring the boundaries, learning a foreign language is a good example because you are bound to acquire a different identity. You become double in a way. There is a good video on vimeo showing the identity play which takes place when trying to learn a new language http://vimeo.com/8537426 . How does the foreign language influence your first language identity? When speaking Hungarian, do you think in English, Grace? Does your voice change, your gestures, your facial expression?

I find myself increasingly confused (mostly in a playful way) when I switch between English and Polish, the way I speak Polish using English sounds, the way I write in Polish using English ways, the way I overuse ‘thank you’ when in Poland but underuse it while in the UK. Who am I? What sort of a changeling? Am I still Polish? Could I be English? British? With my Slavic soul (whatever that is – I’m playing on stereotypes here)? Would I like to be one? What would I have to change in my intellectual and emotional make-up if I did? Lots of fascinating questions a language learner could/must ask themselves on top of mastering lists of vocab and grammar structures.

If you’re interested in language learning and identity, there is some good stuff on Ben Goldstein’s website (talks section) http://www.bengoldstein.es/blog/category/talks/

On a more practical note – a few websites to check out if you want to learn a language http://www.livemocha.com , http://www.myngle.com (both offer Hungarian) and http://www.wiziq.com (no Hungarian at the moment but there is Hindi and lots of other lanaguages).

And yes, kudos for taking up such a challenge Grace – Hungarian is difficult! Good luck with it!

I used Weebly for my last assignment and found it really easy and it looked good too. I’ll probably use it for this assignment too!

Carol

The way you describe technology as altering the boundaries posed by geographical distance is interesting too. Your ‘total immersion’ becomes mediated by books, CDs, MP3s, and virtual tours, and with a posthuman lens, this seems to highlight the ways that face-to-face interactions might also be mediated, through our own technologies of perception, language, and urban space.