For this activity, I invite you to join me in gathering primary and secondary sources that credibly inform the claims of this introductory paragraph, in turn setting the stage for a well-sourced researched argument. I’ve also broken the writing sample into individual sentences and highlighted key content to facilitate your search for sources. With each step of the source-discovery process, I encourage you to review these guided questions:
- Which lines of inquiry will you follow in support of this intro paragraph?
- Which search engines and/or library resources will you use to find sources?
- Which key terms and search phrases will you use to yield potential sources?
- How will you determine if those sources are not only relevant but also credible?
- How does your source support the argumentative claims of this intro paragraph?
With the use of Hypothesis, I invite you to post an annotation below in which you (a) share a link to your source and (b) write a reflection on how and why you came to choose that source in particular.
‘A Bridge of Sight’: Braces, Banalities, & Machines of Loving Grace
Satirizing happy-go-lucky views on technology in his famed poem, “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace,” Richard Brautigan famously maps computer jargon onto Edenic imagery in an effort to frame the emergent techies of 1967 as naïve in their utopic visions of the future (15). It is through his ironic tone that Brautigan critiques technological discourse whose lofty rhetoric acts only to obscure deeper, more despotic potentials. For instance, the double entendre of the title “All Watched Over” means for computers to protect us “all” from harm, yet likewise calls for computers to surveil us “all,” embedded in our “cybernetic ecology” of all-powerful, all-seeing technology (Brautigan 19). Over half a century later, Brautigan’s critique rings with exigence in its intent to make visible the unseen tracings of technology today — the crux of which Mattieu Gafou adapts to his H+ photos series for MAPS Images. Opting for flash photography even “in reporting conditions,” Gafou quite literally shines a light on our relationship to technology, not only exposing but also enacting the “latent violence involved in the technological transformations under way.” Gafou also juxtaposes familiar and novel inventions, ranging from braces and iPhones to VR headsets and magnetic implants, which invites the viewer to see these middle gadgets with fresh eyes. In turn, he both accepts and expands on the imperative of Brautigan, reframing our normalized relationship to technology with little more than a flash through the looking glass of yesterday’s creations.
Works Cited
Brautigan, Richard. “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.” All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, 1967, Communication Company.
Gafou, Matthieu. “H+.” MAPS Images, 2018, www.mapsimages.com/works/h/.
Lines of inquiry
Satirizing happy-go-lucky views on technology in his famed poem, “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace,” Richard Brautigan famously maps computer jargon onto Edenic imagery in an effort to frame the emergent techies of 1967 as naïve in their utopic visions of the future (15).
It is through his ironic tone that Brautigan critiques technological discourse whose lofty rhetoric acts only to obscure deeper, more despotic potentials.
For instance, the double entendre of the title “All Watched Over” means for computers to protect us “all” from harm, yet also calls for computers to surveil us “all,” embedded in our “cybernetic ecology” of all-powerful, all-seeing technology (Brautigan 19).
Over half a century later, Brautigan’s critique rings with exigence in its intent to make visible the unseen tracings of technology today — the crux of which Mattieu Gafou adapts to his H+ photos series for MAPS Images.
Using only flash photography, Gafou quite literally shines a light on our relationship to technology, not only exposing but also enacting the “latent violence involved in the technological transformations under way.”
Gafou also juxtaposes familiar and novel inventions, ranging from braces and iPhones to VR headsets and magnetic implants, which invites the viewer to see these middling gadgets with fresh eyes.
In turn, he both accepts and expands on the imperative of Brautigan, reframing our normalized relationship of technology with little more than a flash through the looking glass of yesterday’s creations.
- “Richard Brautigan”
- “Edenic imagery”
- “emergent techies of 1967”
- “utopic visions of the future”
- “technological discourse”
- “lofty rhetoric” → “utopic visions of the future”
- “for computers to protect us”
- “for computers to surveil us”
- “cybernetic ecology”
- “to make visible the unseen tracings of technology today”
- “MAPS Images”
- “flash photography”
- “to see these middling gadgets with fresh eyes”