How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics

N. Katherine Hayles

May 2008 · University of Chicago Press

About this ebook

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.

Ratings and reviews

Don’t you just love it when someone takes an idea that you have perceived as a given and challenges it? Hayles does that here – once right off the bat in the book’s title and later through a detailed seriation of how information did NOT lose its body; it is not a separate, isolated entity from the media which contains it. The title, “How We Became Posthuman” is confrontational, as it posits that these things have already happened to us. You are probably, to some degree, already a cyborg. Being a fan of Bionic Woman – I read on. To support the title, Hayles maintains that our use of tools has allowed us to continually redefine what it means to be human, and that we have gone past a post-modern discoursive view of humanity. An English professor at UCLA, Hayles brings a breadth of science fiction to bear on these notions, and supports them with a timeline that focuses on three notions: First, she examines how information lost its body and became conceptualized as separate from the material that embodies it. Timeline - Macy’s conferences 1945-60. Next she examines the cyborg and how it captured us through cultural, literary, and technological lenses. Timeline - Reflexivity 1960-80. Finally, she reveals the emergence of the posthuman, introducing new categories and explaining how they differ from the old, in particular mentioning the flaw in postmodern foci on discourse rather than embodiment. Timeline – Virtuality, now. A dense, viscous read – this is not something to tackle on your lunch break.

Impressive....most impressive.