Sherry Turkle, in her book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (2011), dives into a continuous theme within the contents of this comparative essay and the readings Prosthetic Memory by Landsberg and The iPhone Ehrfarung by McArthur. It is the idea that a progression of media and technologies has aided a prosthesis in the interaction between man and machine in what she refers to as the cognitive process of “tethering”. The machine becomes part of the identity of the individual, making them connected and alone. Both texts included in this comparison do not stray greatly from Turkle’s arguments. Prosthetic Memory and Erfahrung (to shorten) rely heavily on the idea of an expansion of the human. A tethering of external factors that impact how we define human experience. Although the texts initially seem parallel to each other, I would argue that they both give a collaborative account of how media and mediation create a continuation of the posthuman as a tethering to external factors. These two texts, however, differ greatly when discussing the parameters of reality and authenticity when discussing the nature of the human and the now posthuman. 

Landsberg’s text talks about the inclusion of prosthetic memory in the relationship with experience and identity. She illustrates this idea through different movies that relate to individuals who have a composition of memories not belonging to them. The prosthetic memory is defined as experiences never lived. An example is watching a film. A position where experiences become an imposition. She defines memory as the locus of humanity, connecting it to an aspect of experience. For her, memory is not specifically a recollection or authentication of the past but about impacting actions in the present. On this note, media breaks the notion of experience, and as such blurs the line between the memories that are authentic and prosthetic or simulated. 

Landsberg refers to Baudillard’s claim that, because of the proliferation of different media, this dichotomy between the real and simulated has been destroyed to the point that individuals can “no longer distinguish between the real… and hyperreal”. When returning to movies, identification is a critical point for this. She quotes Blumer on the emotional possessive effect with regard to experiencing films. This possessive effect leads to the decentering of lived experience as it intertwines with the emotional connection to fiction, constructing a sense of identity. They “become a part of their own personal archive.”. This connects to Kracauer’s conception of cinema having a bodily component but with a collective aspect. Memories then have circulation and don’t have a single owner, but rather prosthetic memories are circulated by mass media and worn by its consumers. The general argument she establishes is thus a synthesis of the authentic with the prosthetic and inauthentic as the creation of memory. 

McArthur’s text The iPhone Erfahrung follows authenticity in a different scope. As it is a text relating to Walter Benjamin, authenticity is referred to as being part of an object’s aurality. The text follows an analysis of the usage of Apple’s Siri as an explication of the preservation of aura in a mass commercialised form. The aura is regarded as a mystical sense of authenticity, and the posthuman aura created by this technology has created a hierarchical standpoint between the user and the assistant. The user has a feeling of power over technology while simultaneously being in awe of its aurality. Posthuman aura is defined as the coexistence of futuristic technology with human-like interactions. An extension of oneself or, in a sense, a prosthetic experience. Siri maintains this element of aura since its system functions on synthesis and translation rather than reproduction, which would break the aura. This awe and subjugation to the posthuman aura is then disrupted by what McArthur refers to as the auditory unconscious. A sense of critical thought through the ears that undermines the power hierarchy of this prosthetic relationship as being inherently capitalistic and an industrial extension of the unreal. Siri is a prosthetic tool. You utilise it for tasks and interactions that are revealed as regressive to human interaction and development. While prosthetic memories, on the other hand, are used for the development of experience and identity.

Landsberg argues through her analysis, argues that films create these states of prosthetic memories where the consumer connects to empathetic means in the creation of experiences that shape identity. In a sense, it diminishes the idea of the optical unconscious as it breaks through from the analytical sense of an awakened state and enters the stage of emotional possession. One can be critical, perhaps of the meaning and ideologies that are mediated through film, but the consciousness, or as Benjamin puts it, the shield for our deeper selves, is exploited by the emotional experience of prosthetic memories. Although McArthur argues that the optical unconscious has some limitations, she continues the thought of medium permeability into the sensory unconscious, arguing more for the auditory unconscious as a stronger force. One can’t block out shocking images but can easily block shocking sounds in the conscious mind, but while quoting Ryder, the “penetration and surroundability” of sounds creates a relationship of rejection of conscious reflection and an unnoticed internalisation into the unconscious. She exemplifies this with Christmas music that impels you to keep buying, which can be connected to memories, prosthetic or not, that affect decisions, actions and identity per Landsberg.

A shared theme between both texts is the Freudian concept of the uncanny. The uncanny, as described in Prosthetic Memories, is an encounter with something familiar and unfamiliar. Both Landsberg and McArthur agree on the idea that the lack of authenticity removes the uncanny. For Landsberg, the uncanny is connected to the prosthetic memories in the sense that an individual with prosthetic memories doesn’t necessarily experience this, since it doesn’t partake in their identity. Whereas McArthur agrees with this idea in the sense that Siri, through its mythical sense of authenticity embedded in its aura, creates an uncanny relationship with the user through its disembodied technological voice. The uncanniness then connects to Freud’s return of the repressed, as it places the user in a “shock of modern life that has been subsumed under the auditory”. 

A key difference between the texts is the synthesis and parallelism of the real and the unreal. For Landsberg, the different processes of acquiring prosthetic memories are a rejection of postmodern thought, as this relationship creates the absence of experience. Rather, she argues that there is no value in the distinction between types of memories since the expansion of mass media dissolves the divide between the authentic and inauthentic when it comes to memories. Authentic experience then is extended to the point where it can’t be identified for its realness. Although prosthetic experiences perhaps have a different medium in which they are created, they still have the same sensual and physiological impact as the “normal”, and we cannot create a safe position for their distinction. She argues that memories are utilised not for the reflection of the past but for the authentication and usage in the present. The culmination of an identity. When memories diverge from or to lived experiences, issues of identity arise. 

Now, a large counterargument to this relationship is the arguments of McArthur regarding Siri. She compares the relationship between the human nature of the user and the technology in some instances as a hierarchy of power between the user and their “assistant”. This could be interpreted as an extension of the posthuman, where these interactions can be regarded as a new form of thinking of the human experience as a collective between man and technology. However, she offers a counter to this argument when mentioning how simulated human conversation under the guise of authenticity emphasises interpersonal distance. Siri is created in a sort of black box by developers and utilises layers of translation and synthesis that create a feeling of closeness but a distance between the user and the recipient. 

McArthur argues that this relationship between the real and simulated doesn’t merge like for Landsberg but creates a human relationship bound under late-stage capitalism. It is also important to note that, considering the empathetic relationships with this divide in Prosthetic memory, the reality of Siri’s nature does not have the empathetic and sensory component that merges the dichotomy between the real and simulated. The sensory components, such as the auditory, and in terms of their unconscious, allow the separation between them. McArthur makes it clear that the process of interaction facilitates the awareness of the human distance and the fetishisation of the product, as well as the exploitative capabilities for and against the user. Another distinction can be connected to Siri’s lack of understanding of the uncommon or exceptional, where only the ordinary drives. In this sense, it cannot completely immerse itself into the identity of the user, as in terms of memory, human complexity is not ordinary. She argues that this is all a “revelation of the auditory unconscious: the intensely personal cannot be wholly conscripted in the service of capitalism”.

In conclusion, both texts create arguments for the nature of the human and posthuman as a culmination of external extensions that alter identity and experience. Prosthetic Memories argues for the inclusion of the unreal and imposed into the creation of an identity, while iPhone Erfahrung warns about the dangers of blurring the lines between the real and the unreal. What both texts can aid in the understanding of the present is the ability to divide the experiences that we process into our prosthetic memory, and the experiences we critically analyse in our unconscious. With the troubling rise of AI experiences in the visual and auditory have blurred the gap between our interaction with technology and the empathy and application we place on what we consume. Landsberg concludes in a form that is applicable to both texts. Memories cannot be for a self-conforming narrative, and we must have a set of ethics of personhood based on empathetic relations, which I would extend to the real in terms of the human.