As with any group, our primary difficulty in specifying our topic was not so much discussing what we knew about the subject, deciding what we wanted to focus on, and then finally doing the research, but rather it was the challenge of finding a time when everyone could meet outside of class. But, this hurdle out of the way, we managed to have several quite interesting discussions on the subject of cyborgs, and possibly even managed to come closer to a definition of the word. Because, after all, "cyborg" is an extremely nebulous concept. Merritt had a list of cyborgs in society, with items ranging from George Washington (and his false teeth), to people in wheelchairs, to RoboCop. Clearly, he took a rather broad view of the subject. Mindy, in turn, brought Max Ernst to the discussion. Ernst was an artist who lived around the time of the two world wars. In various art forms, but especially through his rather strange collages, Ernst drew on the feelings of alienation and dehumanization that were a direct result of the wars. His quite disturbing drawings often portray people who are surrounded by, even part of (victims of?) machinery. At least, that's what Mindy said. I, personally, wasn't especially sure what to expect from the topic when I chose it. I had ideas that it would be more about virtual reality, the internet, and the information age, which is the association that Basalmo seems to make. But the group discussions actually helped show me how much my initial assumptions left out.
As the token high-tech topic group, it seemed only natural to use video clips to illustrate our points. Merritt, as the video specialist in the group, ended up creating a fairly flashy, quick-paced video that combines clips from a broad range of movies and tv shows. It's rather a pity we didn't have the time or diligence to do a full video survey of the cyborg genre, because I think that's the best way to see what the American cultural viewpoint on cyborgs has been through the ages. For good or ill, Max Headroom may have been replaced by the Terminator.
I don't think we made any special assumptions about our audience, beyond that everyone is a reasonably well-educated and open-minded member of American culture. Basalmo, for instance, spent too much time explaining the lay of the land, and far too little time making points. We've really concentrated much less on the virtual reality and "cyber" aspects of the concept of cyborgs, and so hopefully our presentation will be much more readable, as it were, than Basalmo's essay.
I'm not quite sure what I, personally, added to the group. Partly, I think, I contributed by not coming in with a pre-defined view of cyborgs. Although that seems like it's not very helpful, it's actually extremely helpful in a presentation of this sort. The other two group members both had fairly definite associations with the term, as I'm sure their portions of the presentation will demonstrate. I had no such associations, so I was able to both work with what they gave and step off it to make other links and interconnections.
This paper isn't especially interesting, I'm afraid. I've never been very good at group work, and I'm even worse about writing about it. Still, I've had a very interesting time working with Mindy and Merritt, and even had a good time working in a group. (Despite the difficulties of finding a meeting-time.)