“The only thing that makes me feel human is the way I’m treated.”

Our memories, thoughts and feelings are all that we have to cling on to as a sense of self. At the same time, our perceptions are flawed and not reflective of the material world. Our existence, instead, lives at the intersection of our sense of selves and how the world perceives us. Beyond just feeling alive, we need to be validated by people who are close and far from us to really believe that we exist (well, at least I do.)

Our existence is created from within, but mediated by externalities. And as the world develops around us, we change alongside it. Technology facilitates this transformation– We augment and change our bodies by inviting technology into them. My phone, my home, my car, everything I use is an extension of myself as a person, and changes or validates my perception of everything. Although technology is a part of me, I am also a part of it, and I am subject to its influences and the control it has over my daily existence. I can choose, to some extent, which parts to assemble into my complete self, but not how those parts contribute to my humanity.

Batou: We haven’t signed our bodies and souls away to [our jobs].

Major: True, we can quit, but we’d have to give back our cyborg parts and augmented brains to the government… Components that make up me as an individual. There are countless ingredients that make up the human body and mind. A face and voice to distinguish oneself from others, the hand you see when you wake up, your childhood memories and feelings about your future. And that’s not all. There’s also the ability to access vast amounts of information from an infinite network. All of that blends to create a mixture that forms me, and gives rise to my conscience. At the same time though, I feel continually confined within boundaries…

Autonomy is one of the mediating externalities of all of our lives. It is is the external force that is in contention with our internal sense of self: Any internal desire to “be ourselves” is mediated by externalities beyond our control, and our individuality arises from the intersection of this conflict. People have vastly different levels of autonomy depending on class, race or other social distinctions, and thus experience vastly different boundaries that impede their expression of the self. If someone experiences different constraints in this way, that person experiences a fundamentally different reality. Much of what we hear in this country about “freedom” is tied up in economic terms; people who reach “financial independence” are literally emerging as their true selves. Someone with minimal barriers in the way of existence, who has maximum freedom to shape the world as similarly as possible to whatever happens inside their heads.

And where does the newborn go from here? The net is vast and infinite.