Technology even affects dating! Is this a sign of posthumanism?

Last night I went to see "He's Just Not That Into You." Aside from being a hilarious and realistic portrayal of our 21st century dating debacle, one scene in particular caused me to think of the impact that technology has even on the dating aspect of our lives. The embedding text for this youtube video was "disabled upon request," probably because the film was just recently released, but if you have time, please visit the below URL for a good laugh with some bonus insight...

Drew Barrymore's take on technology in the modern dating world:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VITe9mQeI4

Happy Thursday!! :)


So after reading Katherine Hayles' essay "How We Became Posthuman," and re-reading my old blog post, I began to think about just how much impact technology has on our day-to-day lives. Although this video from Youtube.com is humorous, its implications are far-reaching and almost sad. Because we all have some type of identity attachment to our electronic devices, and because real human interaction seems to have gone by the wayside in many ways, technology in the realm of a "bad date environment" is a negative thing. Instead of a personal and thoughtful face-to-face interaction with a possible love interest in which those dreaded words of rejection arise, people are given cold electronic rejections, which apparently, are all the more hurtful because of their impersonal nature.

So, is this a sign of merging into posthumanism? Our emotions are evidently effected by electronic words of rejection, perhaps even more than the real, spoken ones. When it comes to technology, are we putting too much of our own person into our devices? Since we attach our emotions to our electronic and technological interactions and, as Hayles notes, when "[we] gaze at the flighering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens... [we] have already become posthuman," is technology in the dating world further enabling our transformation into posthuman ideology (Hayles 4)?

FYI: discussion topics in this class have really got my brain wheels spinning in directions I never foresaw!