How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and InformaticsIn this age of DNA computers and artificial intelligence, information is becoming disembodied even as the "bodies" that once carried it vanish into virtuality. While some marvel at these changes, envisioning consciousness downloaded into a computer or humans "beamed" Star Trek-style, others view them with horror, seeing monsters brooding in the machines. In How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles separates hype from fact, investigating the fate of embodiment in an information age. Hayles relates three interwoven stories: how information lost its body, that is, how it came to be conceptualized as an entity separate from the material forms that carry it; the cultural and technological construction of the cyborg; and the dismantling of the liberal humanist "subject" in cybernetic discourse, along with the emergence of the "posthuman." Ranging widely across the history of technology, cultural studies, and literary criticism, Hayles shows what had to be erased, forgotten, and elided to conceive of information as a disembodied entity. Thus she moves from the post-World War II Macy Conferences on cybernetics to the 1952 novel Limbo by cybernetics aficionado Bernard Wolfe; from the concept of self-making to Philip K. Dick's literary explorations of hallucination and reality; and from artificial life to postmodern novels exploring the implications of seeing humans as cybernetic systems. Although becoming posthuman can be nightmarish, Hayles shows how it can also be liberating. From the birth of cybernetics to artificial life, How We Became Posthuman provides an indispensable account of how we arrived in our virtual age, and of where we might go from here. |
Contents
| 1 | |
2 Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers | 25 |
The Macy Conferences on Cybernetics | 50 |
Norbert Wiener and Cybernetic Anxiety | 84 |
Cybernetic Syntax in Limbo | 113 |
From Reflexivity to SelfOrganization | 131 |
Boundary Work in the MidSixties Novels of Philip K Dick | 160 |
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How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and ... N. Katherine Hayles No preview available - 1999 |
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abstract android argues articulated Artificial automata autonomy autopoiesis autopoietic autopoietic theory Bateson become behavior biological Blood Music body boundaries Burroughs cells changes chapter cognition complex concept consciousness construction context create cultural cybernetics cyborg dark-haired Dick Dick's dynamics embodied emergence encoded entity entropy environment epistemology evolutionary exist experience feedback loops fiction Foerster function gender Gregory Bateson Hans Moravec Heinz von Foerster homeostasis human idea implications inscription inside instantiated intelligent machines interactions language liberal humanist subject liberal subject Limbo Macy Conferences material Maturana McCulloch mechanisms metaphor mind Moravec mutation narrative narrator neural neurons Norbert Wiener novels observer operation organization pattern Philip K physical posthuman processes programs randomness reality reflexivity Rick robot schizoid scientific sense Shannon signifiers simulation Snow Crash spliced structure technologies Ticket That Exploded tion transformation Turing University Press Varela virtual Warren McCulloch woman York
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Page 3 - Its possessive quality is found in its conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his own person or capacities, owing nothing to society for them. The individual was seen neither as a moral whole, nor as part of a larger social whole, but as an owner of himself.