Faculty Introduction for “Internet: The Machinery of Global Division”

Ryan Hoover’s essay, which questions the inclusive and equalizing power of the Internet, comes out of the first-year-writing seminar, Writing as Inquiry, which I taught during an exchange semester in Shanghai last spring. For this research-based essay, called “The Present is the Future,” we began our work by reading and discussing Donna Haraway’s strange and conceptually rich “Cyborg Manifesto.” Though it seemed impenetrable, Ryan’s work here is exemplary of finding ways to apply Haraway’s 1985 text without rejecting her or deifying her (as many have) but by applying her thinking to our shifting present-future circumstances. Ryan’s essay uses a dynamic and specific array of evidence to create a vital conversation about the unforeseen biases of Internet algorithms and where humans might intervene as he makes a resounding case for “the reimagining of societal relationships and organizations.”

Read “Internet: The Machinery of Global Division” here.

Amira Pierce, Senior Language Lecturer, NYU New York