Mitchell's Me++ handles the cyborg self through the investigation of technologies like the cell phone and other hand-held devices. Even web sites to the new businessman are tackled. Wireless communication brings a gap on distance. What seemed to be miles away is brought together in a minute due to interconnectivity. An example of Mitchell's argument, Cell phone may even be wired into our clothing and equipped with ear sets for hands-free use. Mitchell even mentions Hypertext. The following quote says" Another part consists of the World Wide Web, that is, of hyper linked online documents that I access either by following links or by employing the indexes constructed by search engines. The two parts are completely interwoven; paper documents like this book reference Web pages, Web pages cite paper documents, and some documents exist simultaneously in paper and electronic form".(pg 37). Mitchell questions life in the 21st century where part of the Orwellian society has come to life. Interconnectivity brings people less privacy. The government tends to have more control. Cyberpunk fiction uses this trend quite a effectively. In cyberpunk, some corporation becomes corrupt and a antihero has to sneak in and defeat the corporation from the inside. The cyborg lives in a networked environment filled with interconnections creating new social atmospheres that can be good and bad for the community as a whole. What Me++ gives the reader is a view into not only the world of the present but also the world in the future and how connected humans are with machines.
Last modified 30 December 2006