"There are no human rights in the internet."
I don't know if that was a very well thought-out statement but I heard it said by Atty. Matthias Klang this afternoon in our class on Human Rights and Technology. What could he have possibly meant by that?
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
The Dignity of the "Post-Human"?
I finally was able to get hold of a definition of the term "post-human" that has intrigued me ever since my wife showed me some of her readings on "post-humanism" in her Gender Studies course. Here it is:
"Posthuman
"The idea that either (i) the human species is at an evolutionary dead-end, and must incorporate technologies in order to evolve to the 'next level'; or (ii) that we have long ceased to be human, because of our increasingly intimate relationship with nonhumans, such as technological artifacts. ..." (David Bell, Cyberculture Theorists: Manuel Castells and Donna Haraway (2007: New York, Routledge), p. 24)
It is the second sense of the term that is developed in Donna Haraway's argument that we are cyborgs:
"By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are all cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics."
Bold theoretical pronouncements indeed. We are not only cyborgs figuratively speaking, because the literalness of our intimate relationship to machines, including to computers and cellphones, cannot be denied.
Now, if we are post-human or cyborgs, how are we to make sense of human rights?
One approach is to conceive of human dignity in relation to our relationship/s with machines or technology.
First of all, there is an existing human rights norm that specifically deal with technology, viz., Art. 15(1)(b) of the ICESCR which speaks of the right of everyone "to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications". This is no doubt the legal anchor for the movement to eliminate the "digital divide" between those for whom the internet and digital technology are an ubiquitous presence and those who are simply cut off from such goods.
However, access to technology and bridging the digital divide surely do not exhaust all that is problematic about our relationship to technology. Even when technology is accessible, you can still have an oppressive (dehumanizing?) relationship to it. Two examples come to mind:
1 - work invading our private time because the boss can reach us through the cellphone, or because work can be e-mailed;
2 - call center agents working in the graveyard shift because the internet has integrated relatively cheap labor in a different time zone to the economies of post-industrial countries.
Come to think of it, this is again the "cog in the machine" scenario that Marx has already railed against (so the "post-human" is not so new after all). Except now, the machines are more mobile and more ubiquitous (that is, for those in the right side of the digital divide).
But perhaps we have asked the wrong question. Perhaps it is not a matter of asking how we are humanized or dehumanized by technology, which assumes that we can distinguish between human and machine. If we are post-human, then will human dignity still matter? Will we have to throw away human rights as so much humanist anachronism? By celebrating the arrival of the post-human, are we not in fact giving up on the ideal of the truly human, i.e., people actually being treated as human beings, i.e., with dignity?
"Posthuman
"The idea that either (i) the human species is at an evolutionary dead-end, and must incorporate technologies in order to evolve to the 'next level'; or (ii) that we have long ceased to be human, because of our increasingly intimate relationship with nonhumans, such as technological artifacts. ..." (David Bell, Cyberculture Theorists: Manuel Castells and Donna Haraway (2007: New York, Routledge), p. 24)
It is the second sense of the term that is developed in Donna Haraway's argument that we are cyborgs:
"By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are all cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics."
Bold theoretical pronouncements indeed. We are not only cyborgs figuratively speaking, because the literalness of our intimate relationship to machines, including to computers and cellphones, cannot be denied.
Now, if we are post-human or cyborgs, how are we to make sense of human rights?
One approach is to conceive of human dignity in relation to our relationship/s with machines or technology.
First of all, there is an existing human rights norm that specifically deal with technology, viz., Art. 15(1)(b) of the ICESCR which speaks of the right of everyone "to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications". This is no doubt the legal anchor for the movement to eliminate the "digital divide" between those for whom the internet and digital technology are an ubiquitous presence and those who are simply cut off from such goods.
However, access to technology and bridging the digital divide surely do not exhaust all that is problematic about our relationship to technology. Even when technology is accessible, you can still have an oppressive (dehumanizing?) relationship to it. Two examples come to mind:
1 - work invading our private time because the boss can reach us through the cellphone, or because work can be e-mailed;
2 - call center agents working in the graveyard shift because the internet has integrated relatively cheap labor in a different time zone to the economies of post-industrial countries.
Come to think of it, this is again the "cog in the machine" scenario that Marx has already railed against (so the "post-human" is not so new after all). Except now, the machines are more mobile and more ubiquitous (that is, for those in the right side of the digital divide).
But perhaps we have asked the wrong question. Perhaps it is not a matter of asking how we are humanized or dehumanized by technology, which assumes that we can distinguish between human and machine. If we are post-human, then will human dignity still matter? Will we have to throw away human rights as so much humanist anachronism? By celebrating the arrival of the post-human, are we not in fact giving up on the ideal of the truly human, i.e., people actually being treated as human beings, i.e., with dignity?
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Human Rights Foreign Policy: Cuba and the Right to Health
This is just a qoute from the back cover (a blurb) of the book: John M. Kirk and H. Michael Erisman, Cuban Medical Internationalism (2009: New York, Palgrave MacMillan), to remind me to read this book later when I have more time. I was reminded about Widi's Cuban doctor friend whom she met in Indonesia while on a mission to assist victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami. Before Widi told me about her doctor friend, I haven't heard about Cuban medical internationalism.
"While public health is important for revolutionary Cuba, providing medical service to the developing world is also a priority: some 40,000 medical staff are engaged abroad; the largest medical school in the world (ELAM) has an enrollment of over 8,000 students from the Third World; and since 2004, over 1.5 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean have had their eyesight restored at no cost to them. How has this small nation of 11.3 million people managed this? And what are its motives? This book, the result of four years of research in Cuba, provides an updated analysis of this extraordinary record."
"...In sum, Cuba is credited with saving more lives in the developing world than all the G-8 countries together. ..."
And a short quote from the concluding Chapter:
"[Cuba's] multifaceted contribution undoubtedly reaches more people than the work of all of the G-8 countries together, as well as the World Health Organization (WHO) and Nobel Peace Prize recepient Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF). Each one of these Cuban initiatives puts the industrialized world to shame and, sadly, the extraordinary value of the Cuban contribution to humanity has been badly ignred by Western media. ..." (p. 170)
"While public health is important for revolutionary Cuba, providing medical service to the developing world is also a priority: some 40,000 medical staff are engaged abroad; the largest medical school in the world (ELAM) has an enrollment of over 8,000 students from the Third World; and since 2004, over 1.5 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean have had their eyesight restored at no cost to them. How has this small nation of 11.3 million people managed this? And what are its motives? This book, the result of four years of research in Cuba, provides an updated analysis of this extraordinary record."
"...In sum, Cuba is credited with saving more lives in the developing world than all the G-8 countries together. ..."
And a short quote from the concluding Chapter:
"[Cuba's] multifaceted contribution undoubtedly reaches more people than the work of all of the G-8 countries together, as well as the World Health Organization (WHO) and Nobel Peace Prize recepient Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF). Each one of these Cuban initiatives puts the industrialized world to shame and, sadly, the extraordinary value of the Cuban contribution to humanity has been badly ignred by Western media. ..." (p. 170)
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Opening Scene: My Initial Excuse for this Blog's Title
Every morning I wake up around 6 a.m., if not earlier, to the sound of my infant daughter sitting up beside me. She doesn't really make a sound as she sits up, so maybe, it's instinct. Father's instinct. Though asleep, I just know that she has risen, and so must I, or else she might crawl out of the bed and fall. My baby rises for her first bottle about the same time everyday no matter what time she slept the night before. No alarm clock needed.
You may be asking by now: So what has lactosefree milk got to do with human rights in Scandinavia?
Nothing intrinsically, except that for me it is a symbol of my personal situation as a full-time single dad and also of Sweden and of the Swedish day care system which takes care of my daughter while I go to Gothenburg University to study Human Rights. I associate it with Sweden and Swedish day care because in here, although my daughter appears to be the only one out of the 21 members of her class to be allergic to milk protein, they nevertheless feed her non-allergenic food suited for her. It helps that lactosefree milk is so widely available in Sweden, alongside lactosefree butter and lactosefree yogurt. And then, the day care itself is the realization of a very important human right, to be found in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), to have access to facilities that allow women (and single dads) to balance home and work lives.
As you can probably guess, this a rather personal blog and here I share some notes about some half-thought notions that I currently deal with as a full-time single dad and student of Human Rights at Gothenburg University.
Carrying my baby in one arm, I open the fridge with the other and then reach for the carton of milk. The label reads "Laktosfri" on one side and "Laktosefri" on another. It's Swedish and Danish, respectively, for lactosefree, and pronounced about the same as the English word.
Now I pour about 5 ounces into her bottle and pop this inside the microwave oven for about a minute just so it is not cold. Soon, she is feeding herself, and I take advantage of this moment to change her diaper. Then, it occurs to me, "Laktosfri" may be a good title for this blog.
You may be asking by now: So what has lactosefree milk got to do with human rights in Scandinavia?
Nothing intrinsically, except that for me it is a symbol of my personal situation as a full-time single dad and also of Sweden and of the Swedish day care system which takes care of my daughter while I go to Gothenburg University to study Human Rights. I associate it with Sweden and Swedish day care because in here, although my daughter appears to be the only one out of the 21 members of her class to be allergic to milk protein, they nevertheless feed her non-allergenic food suited for her. It helps that lactosefree milk is so widely available in Sweden, alongside lactosefree butter and lactosefree yogurt. And then, the day care itself is the realization of a very important human right, to be found in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), to have access to facilities that allow women (and single dads) to balance home and work lives.
As you can probably guess, this a rather personal blog and here I share some notes about some half-thought notions that I currently deal with as a full-time single dad and student of Human Rights at Gothenburg University.
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