Something I've been Thinking about Lately

A Yahoo! ad,

a Ryan Trecartin video in which the family is a corporate unit, personality can be up/downloaded, and online avatars operate independently of those who created them,

Zhu Yu and the contemporary avant garde in China,

and Star Trek's borgs.

It's intriguing that certain artists in China are allegedly practicing cannibalism as a means of creative expression. I watched a critical documentary on the subject called Beijing Swings, and some of the artists use it to draw a comparison to Chinese cultural-economic practices, while others seek to aid in the augmentation of human perception. Those who are re-imagining the human condition describe future-humans as a race that utilizes everything and everyone including our dead, a race that is able to accept death as a natural process but not as a final note.
At the same time, western culture seems to be focusing on translating experience into a digital format, on a dimension in which the distinction between the real and the virtual is made ambiguous. Should I want the internet to have my personality? Yahoo! seems to think I already do. And Trecartin evidently accepts it as a plausible premise.

Now, who here would like to be a borg?

Raise your hands.

And who here is fearful of the prospect?

Would love to hear feedback on this one.