How We Became Posthuman

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How We Became Posthuman

N. Katherine Hayles
How We Became Posthuman Book PDF

Author : N. Katherine Hayles
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 364 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2008-05-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780226321394

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How We Became Posthuman by N. Katherine Hayles Pdf

In 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.

How We Became Posthuman

N. Katherine Hayles
How We Became Posthuman Book PDF

Author : N. Katherine Hayles
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 1999-02-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0226321460

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How We Became Posthuman by N. Katherine Hayles Pdf

In 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.

Unthought

N. Katherine Hayles
Unthought Book PDF

Author : N. Katherine Hayles
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 263 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2017-04-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780226447889

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Unthought by N. Katherine Hayles Pdf

N. Katherine Hayles is known for breaking new ground at the intersection of the sciences and the humanities. In Unthought, she once again bridges disciplines by revealing how we think without thinking—how we use cognitive processes that are inaccessible to consciousness yet necessary for it to function. Marshalling fresh insights from neuroscience, cognitive science, cognitive biology, and literature, Hayles expands our understanding of cognition and demonstrates that it involves more than consciousness alone. Cognition, as Hayles defines it, is applicable not only to nonconscious processes in humans but to all forms of life, including unicellular organisms and plants. Startlingly, she also shows that cognition operates in the sophisticated information-processing abilities of technical systems: when humans and cognitive technical systems interact, they form “cognitive assemblages”—as found in urban traffic control, drones, and the trading algorithms of finance capital, for instance—and these assemblages are transforming life on earth. The result is what Hayles calls a “planetary cognitive ecology,” which includes both human and technical actors and which poses urgent questions to humanists and social scientists alike. At a time when scientific and technological advances are bringing far-reaching aspects of cognition into the public eye, Unthought reflects deeply on our contemporary situation and moves us toward a more sustainable and flourishing environment for all beings.

What is Posthumanism?

Cary Wolfe
What is Posthumanism Book PDF

Author : Cary Wolfe
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 394 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780816666140

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What is Posthumanism? by Cary Wolfe Pdf

What does it mean to think beyond humanism? Is it possible to craft a mode of philosophy, ethics, and interpretation that rejects the classic humanist divisions of self and other, mind and body, society and nature, human and animal, organic and technological? Can a new kind of humanities-posthumanities-respond to the redefinition of humanity's place in the world by both the technological and the biological or "green" continuum in which the "human" is but one life form among many? Exploring how both critical thought along with cultural practice have reacted to this radical repositioning, Cary Wolfe-one of the founding figures in the field of animal studies and posthumanist theory-ranges across bioethics, cognitive science, animal ethics, gender, and disability to develop a theoretical and philosophical approach responsive to our changing understanding of ourselves and our world. Then, in performing posthumanist readings of such diverse works as Temple Grandin's writings, Wallace Stevens's poetry, Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, the architecture of Diller+Scofidio, and David Byrne and Brian Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, he shows how this philosophical sensibility can transform art and culture. For Wolfe, a vibrant, rigorous posthumanism is vital for addressing questions of ethics and justice, language and trans-species communication, social systems and their inclusions and exclusions, and the intellectual aspirations of interdisciplinarity. In What Is Posthumanism? he carefully distinguishes posthumanism from transhumanism (the biotechnological enhancement of human beings) and narrow definitions of the posthuman as the hoped-for transcendence of materiality. In doing so, Wolfe reveals that it is humanism, not the human in all its embodied and prosthetic complexity, that is left behind in posthumanist thought.

How We Think

N. Katherine Hayles
How We Think Book PDF

Author : N. Katherine Hayles
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2012-06-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780226321400

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How We Think by N. Katherine Hayles Pdf

How we think: digital media and contemporary technogenesis -- First interlude: practices and processes in digital media -- The digital humanities: engaging the issues -- How we read: close, hyper, machine -- Second interlude: the complexities of contemporary technogenesis -- Tech-toc: complex temporalities and contemporary technogenesis -- Technogenesis in action: telegraph code books and the place of the human -- Third interlude: narrative and database: digital media as forms -- Narrative and database: spatial history and the limits of symbiosis -- Transcendent data and transmedia narrative: Steven Hall's The raw shark texts -- Mapping time, charting data: the spatial aesthetic of Mark Z. Danielewski's Only revolutions.

My Mother Was a Computer

N. Katherine Hayles
My Mother Was a Computer Book PDF

Author : N. Katherine Hayles
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 303 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2010-03-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780226321493

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My Mother Was a Computer by N. Katherine Hayles Pdf

We live in a world, according to N. Katherine Hayles, where new languages are constantly emerging, proliferating, and fading into obsolescence. These are languages of our own making: the programming languages written in code for the intelligent machines we call computers. Hayles's latest exploration provides an exciting new way of understanding the relations between code and language and considers how their interactions have affected creative, technological, and artistic practices. My Mother Was a Computer explores how the impact of code on everyday life has become comparable to that of speech and writing: language and code have grown more entangled, the lines that once separated humans from machines, analog from digital, and old technologies from new ones have become blurred. My Mother Was a Computer gives us the tools necessary to make sense of these complex relationships. Hayles argues that we live in an age of intermediation that challenges our ideas about language, subjectivity, literary objects, and textuality. This process of intermediation takes place where digital media interact with cultural practices associated with older media, and here Hayles sharply portrays such interactions: how code differs from speech; how electronic text differs from print; the effects of digital media on the idea of the self; the effects of digitality on printed books; our conceptions of computers as living beings; the possibility that human consciousness itself might be computational; and the subjective cosmology wherein humans see the universe through the lens of their own digital age. We are the children of computers in more than one sense, and no critic has done more than N. Katherine Hayles to explain how these technologies define us and our culture. Heady and provocative, My Mother Was a Computer will be judged as her best work yet.

Writing Machines

N. Katherine Hayles
Writing Machines Book PDF

Author : N. Katherine Hayles
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 148 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 0262582155

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Writing Machines by N. Katherine Hayles Pdf

A pseudo-autobiographical exploration of the artistic and cultural impact of the transformation of the print book to its electronic incarnations.

Philosophical Posthumanism

Francesca Ferrando
Philosophical Posthumanism Book PDF

Author : Francesca Ferrando
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2019-06-27
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781350059498

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Philosophical Posthumanism by Francesca Ferrando Pdf

The notion of 'the human' is in need of urgent redefinition. At a time of radical bio-technological developments, and in light of the political and environmental imperatives of our age, the term 'posthuman' provides an alternative. The philosophical landscape which has developed as a response to the crisis of the human, includes several movements, such as: Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism and Object Oriented Ontology. This book explains the similarities and differences between these currents and offers a detailed examination of a number of topics that fall under the “posthuman” umbrella, including the anthropocene, artificial intelligence and the deconstruction of the human. Francesca Ferrando affords particular focus to Philosophical Posthumanism, defined as a philosophy of mediation which addresses the meaning of humanity not in separation, but in relation to technology and ecology. The posthuman shift thus emerges in the global call for social change, responsible science and multispecies coexistence.

Our Posthuman Future

Francis Fukuyama
Our Posthuman Future Book PDF

Author : Francis Fukuyama
Publisher : Profile Books
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2017-06-15
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781847653703

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Our Posthuman Future by Francis Fukuyama Pdf

Is a baby whose personality has been chosen from a gene supermarket still a human? If we choose what we create what happens to morality? Is this the end of human nature? The dramatic advances in DNA technology over the last few years are the stuff of science fiction. It is now not only possible to clone human beings it is happening. For the first time since the creation of the earth four billion years ago, or the emergence of mankind 10 million years ago, people will be able to choose their children's' sex, height, colour, personality traits and intelligence. It will even be possible to create 'superhumans' by mixing human genes with those of other animals for extra strength or longevity. But is this desirable? What are the moral and political consequences? Will it mean anything to talk about 'human nature' any more? Is this the end of human beings? Our Posthuman Future is a passionate analysis of the greatest political and moral problem ever to face the human race.

Chaos Bound

N. Katherine Hayles
Chaos Bound Book PDF

Author : N. Katherine Hayles
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2018-03-15
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9781501722950

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Chaos Bound by N. Katherine Hayles Pdf

N. Katherine Hayles here investigates parallels between contemporary literature and critical theory and the science of chaos. She finds in both scientific and literary discourse new interpretations of chaos, which is seen no longer as disorder but as a locus of maximum information and complexity. She examines structures and themes of disorder in The Education of Henry Adams, Doris Lessing’s Golden Notebook, and works by Stanislaw Lem. Hayles shows how the writings of poststructuralist theorists including Barthes, Lyotard, Derrida, Serres, and de Man incorporate central features of chaos theory.

After the Human

Sherryl Vint
After the Human Book PDF

Author : Sherryl Vint
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2020-12-10
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781108836661

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After the Human by Sherryl Vint Pdf

It showcases how posthumanism has transformed the humanities and what new work is now possible in light of this unsettling.

Kinds Of Minds

Daniel C. Dennett
Kinds Of Minds Book PDF

Author : Daniel C. Dennett
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 198 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2008-08-04
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780786723621

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Kinds Of Minds by Daniel C. Dennett Pdf

Combining ideas from philosophy, artificial intelligence, and neurobiology, Daniel Dennett leads the reader on a fascinating journey of inquiry, exploring such intriguing possibilities as: Can any of us really know what is going on in someone else's mind? What distinguishes the human mind from the minds of animals, especially those capable of complex behavior? If such animals, for instance, were magically given the power of language, would their communities evolve an intelligence as subtly discriminating as ours? Will robots, once they have been endowed with sensory systems like those that provide us with experience, ever exhibit the particular traits long thought to distinguish the human mind, including the ability to think about thinking? Dennett addresses these questions from an evolutionary perspective. Beginning with the macromolecules of DNA and RNA, the author shows how, step-by-step, animal life moved from the simple ability to respond to frequently recurring environmental conditions to much more powerful ways of beating the odds, ways of using patterns of past experience to predict the future in never-before-encountered situations. Whether talking about robots whose video-camera "eyes" give us the powerful illusion that "there is somebody in there" or asking us to consider whether spiders are just tiny robots mindlessly spinning their webs of elegant design, Dennett is a master at finding and posing questions sure to stimulate and even disturb.

Posthumanism

Alan Smart,Josephine Smart
Posthumanism Book PDF

Author : Alan Smart,Josephine Smart
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2017-04-26
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781442636446

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Posthumanism by Alan Smart,Josephine Smart Pdf

Designed to explain posthumanism to those outside of academia, this brief and accessible book makes an original argument about anthropology's legacy as a study of "more than human." Smart and Smart return to the holism of classic ethnographies where cattle, pigs, yams, and sorcerers were central to the lives that were narrated by anthropologists, but they extend the discussion to include contemporary issues like microbiomes, the Anthropocene, and nano-machines, which take holism beyond locally bounded spaces. They outline what a holism without boundaries could look like, and what anthropology could offer to the knowledge of more-than-human nature in the past, present, and future.

Robot

Hans P. Moravec
Robot Book PDF

Author : Hans P. Moravec
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Computers
ISBN : 0195136306

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Robot by Hans P. Moravec Pdf

In this compelling book, Hans Moravec predicts that machines will attain human levels of intelligence by the year 2040, and that by 2050, they will surpass us. But even though Moravec predicts the end of the domination by human beings, his is not a bleak vision. Far from railing against a future in which machines rule the world, Moravec embraces it, taking the startling view that intelligent robots will actually be our evolutionary heirs. "Intelligent machines, which will grow from us, learn our skills, and share our goals and values, can be viewed as children of our minds." And since they are our children, we will want them to outdistance us. In fact, in a bid for immortality, many of our descendants will choose to transform into "ex humans," as they upload themselves into advanced computers. This provocative new book, the highly anticipated follow-up to his bestselling volume Mind Children, charts the trajectory of robotics in breathtaking detail. A must read for artificial intelligence, technology, and computer enthusiasts, Moravec's freewheeling but informed speculations present a future far different than we ever dared imagine.

The Posthuman

Rosi Braidotti
The Posthuman Book PDF

Author : Rosi Braidotti
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2013-07-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780745669960

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The Posthuman by Rosi Braidotti Pdf

The Posthuman offers both an introduction and major contribution to contemporary debates on the posthuman. Digital 'second life', genetically modified food, advanced prosthetics, robotics and reproductive technologies are familiar facets of our globally linked and technologically mediated societies. This has blurred the traditional distinction between the human and its others, exposing the non-naturalistic structure of the human. The Posthuman starts by exploring the extent to which a post-humanist move displaces the traditional humanistic unity of the subject. Rather than perceiving this situation as a loss of cognitive and moral self-mastery, Braidotti argues that the posthuman helps us make sense of our flexible and multiple identities. Braidotti then analyzes the escalating effects of post-anthropocentric thought, which encompass not only other species, but also the sustainability of our planet as a whole. Because contemporary market economies profit from the control and commodification of all that lives, they result in hybridization, erasing categorical distinctions between the human and other species, seeds, plants, animals and bacteria. These dislocations induced by globalized cultures and economies enable a critique of anthropocentrism, but how reliable are they as indicators of a sustainable future? The Posthuman concludes by considering the implications of these shifts for the institutional practice of the humanities. Braidotti outlines new forms of cosmopolitan neo-humanism that emerge from the spectrum of post-colonial and race studies, as well as gender analysis and environmentalism. The challenge of the posthuman condition consists in seizing the opportunities for new social bonding and community building, while pursuing sustainability and empowerment.