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Critical Comparison

Are We Living Authentically?

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How should we define authenticity? As humans grow more attached to digital media, the distinction between the virtual world and authentic, “real life” grows convoluted. Alison Landsberg’s chapter, “Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner”, demonstrates the tendency of viewers to adopt emotional movie scenes as authentic memories of their own. In “The iPhone Erfahrung: Siri, the Auditory Unconscious, and Walter Benjamin’s ‘Aura’”, Emily McArthur demonstrates how Siri, a voice-activated personal assistant, situates users in seemingly authentic human power dynamics. Both Landsberg and McArthur emphasize the “posthuman” nature of our modern world where memories and identities, manufactured by media, become injected into our bodies. Together, their texts question whether mediated memories and identities can be deemed authentic.  

Landsberg believes authentic human representation exists in mediated memory. Unlike Baudrillard who believes modern society is divorced from the “‘real’” and entrapped in “a world of simulation” (qtd. in Landsberg 178), Landsberg argues such a distinction never existed in the first place since “information cultures” and “narrative” have always mediated “real”, lived experience (178). She expands her belief by discussing how movie scenes can feel just as real as lived memories. Like Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer, she emphasizes cinema’s ability to produce societal change and “political” collectivism (181). During a moving cinematic experience, audience members may identify with characters and their on-screen adversities; as a result, Landsberg notes films hold “potential to alter one’s actions in the future” (179-180). To Landsberg, movie scenes are not mere fragments of mass media, but “prosthetic memories” which audiences adopt as their own. Unlike natural memories–experienced individually and firsthand–prosthetic memories are acquired virtually, without truly experiencing them (180). Nevertheless, like all memories, prosthetic memories construct identity and how we empathize with others (176). 

As suggested in the title of her text, Landsberg explores the portrayal of prosthetic memories in popular dystopian films such as Total Recall and Blade Runner. In Total Recall, the protagonist, Quade, discovers his life has been manufactured by “the Agency” (Landsberg 181). As a result, he recollects a past he has not experienced; his life has been constructed of injected memories, raising the “question of his identity” (181). His privileging of these memories over his natural self is especially prominent when he is unable to recognize “his face on a portable video screen” (181-182); he associates his authentic self with his prosthetic memories, rather than his facial features, posing the question of whether Quade’s implanted memories are more authentic than his own human body (182). Blade Runner similarly investigates the difference between authentic and inauthentic memory. Rachel, the love interest to Deckard, the film’s protagonist, is an enslaved humanlike robot known as a “replicant”; her memories are manufactured by her employer, Mr. Tyrell, who ensures control over replicants by manipulating their pasts (Landsberg 177). When Rachel plays the piano for Deckard, she states she “‘remember[s] lessons’”; here, Deckard ignores her fabricated past (185). She plays “beautifully” regardless of whether her lessons were prosthetic or “‘real’”, posing the question of whether lived, self-produced memories are better than prosthetic ones (185). To Rachel, her memories of these lessons are real, authentic, and personal even though they are manufactured. Altogether, Landsberg interprets the film as a demonstration that memories, regardless if they are prosthetic or lived, construct meaningful, seemingly authentic identities. Like Total Recall, Blade Runner obscures our distinction between inauthentic, manufactured memories and real, lived experience. 

While Landsberg merges the worlds of prosthetic and authentic memory, McArthur blurs the distinction between machine and human by discussing Siri, a virtual voice-activated assistant. McArthur defines Siri as a “natural language processor” (NLP), a machine that communicates with users through “human language” (116). She notes that “language ability” is typically defined as the factor that “‘makes us human’”; however, digital programs like Siri who produce human speech subvert this notion (116). She notes that Siri produces a humanlike voice through invisible processes of “translation and synthesis” (117). She can be similarized to a being, rather than a set of machinic parts, since a user only hears Siri’s personalized speech that uses “colloquial language” and addresses the user by their name (117). While a traditional Google search produces innumerous results, Siri replicates authentic human communication by providing a singular response to its user’s inquiry (117). In addition to prosthetic memories, Siri’s computer-engineered, anthropomorphic state obscures the difference between inauthentic and authentic. 

Overall, Landsberg and McArthur demonstrate the ability of media to construct identity. Landsberg demonstrates how prosthetic memory defines “personhood and identity” by citing Herbert Blumer’s studies of young adult reactions to films (187, 179). In his studies, Blumer found several respondents practiced “‘imaginative identification’”–the unconscious projection of “‘oneself into the role of hero or heroine’” (qtd. in Landsberg 179). Landsberg illustrates “imaginative identification” as especially impactful; she emphasizes that one respondent who adopted the identity of The Sheik’s “‘heroine’” even felt the kisses of a fictional love interest (Blumer qtd. in 179). Conversely, McArthur demonstrates how NLPs like Siri produce “social hierarchies ” in addition to identity (116). She notes Siri imitates classist and gendered human dynamics by resembling a “‘personal assistant’” who answers to the wishes of her user (119). Additionally, Siri’s effeminate voice accentuates her “secretarial” tone; by acting as an assistant, her user adopts the identity of a master (119, 120). Furthermore, the user, regardless of their class, becomes a “bourgeois subject” by gaining an immediate “sense of power” over Siri (119).  In combination, Landsberg and McArthur demonstrate how media and technology form authentic human identities. 

Prosthetic memory and NLPs are also theorized to produce authentic bodily effects. For example, Landsberg mentions the “Payne Studies” which aimed to calculate the ability of film to physically affect “the bodies of its spectators” (180). Observations of spectators’ “electrical impulses”, “‘circulatory system[s]’”, “respiratory pulse and blood pressure” revealed the potential of film to cause “physiological symptoms” (180). This hypothesis aligns with “‘innervation’”, a Benjaminian view that “bodily experience” and “the publicity of the cinema” can generate collective social movements (Landsberg 181). While films potentially induce diverse biological responses, NLPs like Siri, transform the human body’s processing of sound. McArthur notes humans unknowingly  “tune out” noises, transferring them to their “unconscious”; she equates this instinct to seeing “‘without hearing’” (Simmel qtd. in 121). Siri, a “disembodied technological voice”, however, forces users to hear “‘without seeing’”; her lack of physical form forces users to rely on different senses (122). As a result, prosthetic memory and NLPs alike produce authentic, corporeal effects.

In our lectures and tutorials, we have often discussed media’s establishment of body standards, virtual identities in video games, and avatars on dating sites; this comparison of texts expands this discussion by showing a melding of virtual and “real” life through film and NLPs. The authentic and anthropomorphic qualities of new media demonstrate that the “posthuman” era is not a faraway prediction embedded in dystopian futures; rather, it is situated in our present. Modern reliance on media as a guide for identity formation is prominent in our adoption of cinematic prosthetic memory and our widespread use of humanlike NLPs. While Landsberg demonstrates films’ abilities to implant prosthetic memory and construct identity, McArthur demonstrates natural language processors’ abilities to construct identity by placing users in power dynamics. The impact of prosthetic memory and natural language processors  can also be perceived through their corporeal effects. Altogether, these powerful forms of media entangle the concepts of inauthentic and authentic. 

Works Cited

McArthur, Emily. “The iPhone Erfahrung Siri, the Auditory Unconscious, and Walter Benjamin’s ‘Aura’.” Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman, edited by Dennis M. Weiss, Amy D. Propen, and Colby Emmerson Reid, ch. 6, Bloomsbury Publishing, 14 Aug. 2014, pp. 113-127. 


Landsberg, Alison. “Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner.” Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment, edited by Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows, SAGE Publications, 1995, pp. 175-189.

Photo Credit

Yap, Jeremy. turned on projector. Unsplash, 9 Nov. 2016, https://unsplash.com/photos/turned-on-projector-J39X2xX_8CQ.

Written by Emily Shin

Critical Response

Making… In a Silent Search

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Tactility and silence are essential conditions of meaningful learning. The blog post, “In a Silent Search: Reflection on Umberto Eco’s Library of the World”, by Maryam Abusamak, is a film analysis of the documentary, Umberto Eco: A Library of the World (2022), directed by Davide Ferrario. In this blog post, Abusamak summarizes the core themes of the documentary; she demonstrates how the library of the famous philosopher, Umberto Eco, acts as a meaningful tool of knowledge production. She proves that in an information-saturated world, this biographical film demonstrates the importance of learning slowly and selectively. To extend her analysis, I propose that this film also exemplifies the cruciality of knowing through being, a concept explained in Tim Ingold’s book, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art, and Architecture. Through connecting Abusamak’s analysis to Ingold’s framework, I aim to show the importance of learning independently and critically through slow-paced and tactile methods; this message is especially important in a world where mis- and disinformation is instantaneously available through simple clicks.

Both Eco and Ingold illustrate inanimate objects as living beings. Interacting with these beings achieves meaningful knowledge production. I place emphasis on the word “with”, as Ingold repeatedly encourages the reader to not think “of” but “with” objects (8). Abusamak perceives Eco’s library, as presented in the documentary, as a “living organism” that “binds matter, meaning, and mediation”. In each book, “matter and meaning are inseparable”, demonstrating Ingold’s view that knowledge is made “in correspondence” with a material rather than extracted “from” it (94, 8). To Ingold, objects are alive due to their everchanging state; a building is never fully completed, as it will experience reconstructions, mold removal, and repainting over time (48), and a statue changes continuously, as it is chiseled by its artist and eventually “worn down by rain” (22). Abusamak’s interpretation of Eco’s library exemplifies this concept metaphorically and physically. She describes his library as a “living system of technical memory”, as well as “living matter” made of “ink” and “paper” (Abusamak). As a result, the individual who peruses this library acts as a maker of knowledge among a collection of living beings. Therefore, Eco’s library exemplifies Ingold’s view by acting as a “world of active materials” in which the maker is a “participant” (Ingold 21).

Furthermore, Eco’s library exemplifies Ingold’s view that tactile mediums enable nonconformist learning. Within her blog post, Abusamak claims the library exemplifies Stiegler’s concept of  “epiphylogenesis”–the recording of human evolution through “tools, marks and traces we create” (qtd. in Abusamak). These physical traces externalize memories which survive “across generations” (Abusamak). While Eco favours tactile media consumption, Ingold favours tactile media-making; he believes handwriting, handdrawing, “weaving, lacemaking and embroidery” portray “the stories of the world” (112). He states that human knowledge production should replicate the “ongoing movement of” handdrawn and handwritten lines (Ingold 140). Furthermore, he does not praise “straight-line people” who run from point “A to B” (Ingold 140), but instead promotes “pack-donkey people” who “wander” and learn through “self-discovery” (140, 141). Rather than pursuing a linear path leading from “idea” to “action”, he embraces learning through instinct and curiosity (Ingold 140). This idea is upheld by Eco’s library, which “resists the linear order and embraces the chaos of curiosity” (Abusamak). Altogether, Eco’s library promotes knowing through being; its collection of non-chronological memories embraces the whimsical, unconventional learning promoted by Ingold.

Lastly,  Eco’s library and Ingold’s theory express skepticism towards virtual learning. According to Eco, “clicking a button” brings about a “bibliography of 10,000 titles” that is “worthless” due to its sheer ubiquity; however, if one discovered three library books, they “would read them… and learn something” (qtd. in Abusamak). Ingold agrees with this statement; he believes modern consumers abandon learning as soon as they “[fill] [their] bags” with information (5). Like Eco, he condemns the mindless clicks produced by our fingers. He states that when ubiquitous information “is at our fingertips” it is simultaneously “out of our hands” (122). Additionally, he promotes Heidegger’s views of the “hand” as a symbol of sentience; when it writes with pen, “it tells” (Ingold 122). Therefore, he argues traditional penmen produce emotional “gesture and inscription”, while modern typists do not “feel” their “letters” (Ingold 122, 123).  He shows that in order to generate true making, we must engage the entire human hand, rather than press buttons that enable machinic processes. To Ingold and Eco, technological advancement, sensitive to the touch of our fingertips, has decimated emotionally-engaged learning and impactful media consumption.

In a distracting, information-saturated world, Eco and Ingold emphasize the importance of learning through instinctual, nonconformist, and tactile means. Rather than gathering ubiquitous information through a mindless press of a button, individuals must attentively engage with physical materials to produce meaningful knowledge. As Abusamak states, Eco’s philosophy “challenges the illusion that more information equals more knowledge”; instead he attributes intellect to thinking slowly and selectively. According to Abusamak, Eco’s library relates to our curriculum through its transformation of media theory into “something we can see and feel”; her physical description of Eco’s library and its ability to evoke curiosity demonstrates the importance of slow, tactile learning. As a result, Eco’s library is an example of a tool that enacts Ingold’s concept of “knowing” occurring “at the heart of being” (6). Instead of instantaneously summoning innumerous sources of digestible information, we can engage directly with a physical environment, such as that of a library, to independently conceive truth.

Works Cited

Abusamak, Maryam. In a Silent Search: Reflection on Umberto Eco’s Library of the World, UBC Blogs, 9 Oct 2025, https://blogs.ubc.ca/mdia300/archives/394 .


Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203559055.

Image Taken by Emily Shin (Page 83 of George Orwell’s 1984)

Post Written by Emily Shin

Other

Video Games as Evocative Objects

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Video games can evoke feelings of liberating escapism while shaping perceptions of real life. In her anthology, Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, Sherry Turkle demonstrates the ability of objects to facilitate transitional periods of life. Several chapters demonstrate how beloved objects can mediate coming-of-age experiences. When reflecting on my own belongings, I realized a Nintendo game titled, Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town, mediated my perceptions of adulthood. I perceive this cherished game as my own “evocative object”; as a young child, its virtual world evoked my excitement towards growing up. 

For my seventh birthday, my oldest sister gifted me a mysterious Macy’s box. Inside the box was my first video game console–a pink, hand-me-down GameBoy Advance. Inside the console was a game cartridge titled, Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town. As I flipped the console’s on-switch for the first time, a saturated, pixelated screen and a cheerful soundtrack greeted me. The game was a farming simulator, where the main character collects profits by selling dairy, poultry, crops, and foraged items across the quaint atmosphere of Mineral Town. While creating a profitable farm, the player can build relationships with NPC townspeople, get married, and start a family. The game never ends; however, one can presume that winning consists of bringing economic prosperity to the town and becoming a likeable figure among its citizens. At the young age of seven, I did not realize the game’s themes of coming-of-age, hard work, and social acceptance. Now, as a twenty-year-old reflecting on its narrative, I recognize its depiction of adulthood through the player’s journey of moving to a new town, meeting new people, and pursuing a risky career.

I played this game for hours on end, under the covers past bedtime, and during the morning before school; Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town not only catalyzed my love for video games, but mediated my expectations of adulthood. Through numerous hours of improving my farm and achieving a successful lifestyle for the in-game protagonist, the game subconsciously instilled the message that hard work results in joy and companionship. Additionally, the game introduced concepts of trade and capitalism to its child audience by framing a profitable lifestyle as the player’s ultimate goal. Within the game, the protagonist can earn the townspeople’s admiration by gifting them items and talking to them on a daily basis. This mechanic led my immature mind to think that in reality, showering individuals with their favoured items and repeatedly speaking to them would guarantee their loyalty. The addictive, interactive medium illustrated friendships as collectible prizes, rather than everchanging, complex relationships. Unknowingly, this piece of electronic media produced an unrealistic view of adult life as fun, easy, and exciting.

I believe this evocative object would belong in Turkle’s chapter, “Objects of Transition and Passage”. Turkle notes transitional objects “[mediate]” a child’s “growing recognition” of their independence (Winnicott qtd. in 314). Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town taught me such independence by forcing me to make responsible choices in a low-stakes environment. If I forgot to feed my livestock or water my crops, my profits could hinder. Then, I would have less money to purchase gifts for my in-game neighbours and I would lose their friendship; as a result, the game taught me accountability in a simulated setting. However, as I grew older, I lost interest in the game. I no longer needed it to simplify the concept of responsibility to me; instead, I practiced “real-life” responsibility through managing schoolwork, chores, and extracurricular pursuits. As I ventured into my teenage years, the game sat in my dusty drawer, supporting Turkle’s view that these objects of childhood development are “destined to be abandoned” (314). 

Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town as a Cyborg Object

Furthermore, this game acts as a “cyborg” object–an object which combines the “natural and the artificial” (Turkle 325).  An example of a “cyborg” object is Annalee Newitz’s beloved laptop in the chapter “My Laptop”. Newitz’s relationship with her laptop is deeply “intimate”; the inanimate device melds with her natural self causing her difficulty in distinguishing “where it leaves off and she begins” (Turkle 325). She exists as “one with her virtual persona” and views herself as the ‘“command line…of glowing green letters”’ on her screen (Turkle 325). Similarly to Newitz, I developed an emotional attachment to my virtual persona–the tiny, pixelated farmer on the screen of my GameBoy Advance. The more time I invested in my persona, the more she represented my hard work. As a result, my connection to her grew, similarly to the laptop’s “co-extensive” relationship with Newitz’s “self” (Turkle 325). Altogether, this avatar was not just an escape to a simplistic world where adulthood did not seem so frightening, but a representation of myself and the adult I aspired to be.


Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town’s Mediation of the Body

As Wegenstein states in Critical Terms for Media Studies, “‘the logic of the computer”’ has afforded humans the ability to exist as numerous “selves” (28). She notes that modern individuals experience satisfaction by constructing several virtual “personas” that contrast their real-life, “mundane” selves (Wegenstein 28). I experienced this phenomenon while developing my in-game persona; my avatar’s economic and social autonomy contrasted my supervised upbringing. Moreover, the amount of exciting tasks the game afforded my character differed greatly from my simple, repetitive childhood. Rather than being a supervised seven-year-old child, the game transformed myself into a farm-owner, creating a self-sufficient life.

Conclusion

Altogether, my virtual experiences afforded by Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town mediated my expectations of adult life. Through using this object as a form of escapism, I gained a deep emotional connection to this game that remains with me today. While glamourizing adulthood, this game played a role in my childhood development by introducing concepts of hard work and responsibility.   

Works Cited

Wegenstein, Bernadette. “Body.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, edited by W.J.T. Mitchell and Mark B.N. Hansen, U of Chicago P, 2010, pp. 19-34.

Turkle, Sherry. “WHAT MAKES AN OBJECT EVOCATIVE?” Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, edited by Sherry Turkle, The MIT Press, 2007, pp. 307–27. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hhg8p.39 . Accessed 4 Oct. 2025.

Written by Emily Shin

Photos taken by Emily Shin