- ISBN13: 9780226321462
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
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… More >>
How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics
Tags: artificial intelligence, Became, Bodies, computer, consciousness, Cybernetics, dna computers, embodiment, fate, hype, Informatics, literature, monsters, n katherine hayles, Posthuman, star trek, star trek style, Virtual, virtual bodies, virtuality
#1 by F. Mercer on February 2, 2010 - 10:49 am
This is probably one of the hardest books I have ever read–with no background in either philosophy or cybernetics, much of what Hayles discusses is just plain incomprehensible. I also found it difficult to accept the idea of humans already being “post-human.” If you are interested in deep philosophical writings on technology and the human condition, with links to literature, read this. If you don’t really care about the post-human, skip it.
Rating: 2 / 5
#2 by Chris McKinstry on February 2, 2010 - 1:00 pm
This book is well written, well researched and just plain wrong.
How, I asked myself, is it possible for someone of Hayles’ obvious intelligence to believe that mind can’t be seperated from body? How can someone read Weiner,and Shannon and McKay and not understand that the only difference between you and me is the same as the difference between any two MP3’s – BITS.
To be human is not dependent on a specific physicality as Hayles asserts, it is dependent only on information (which itself requires a minimum physicality, though not specific).
Yes, Katherine, for a bit to exist it must have a physical embodiment. But it doesn’t matter what type of matter that body is made of, be it carbon or silicon, neuron or ram.
We’re all just very long and complex binary strings in a universe of fundamental particles that are ultimately themselves just shorter binary strings; pure information. Information exactly as Shannon defined it.
Wrong as it is, you’ll be better off for having read this book than not.
Rating: 3 / 5
#3 by Natasha Vita-More on February 2, 2010 - 3:55 pm
Interesting how Ms. Hayles does not mention the transhuman or transhumanism, Max More and his seminal essay “Becoming Posthuman” written several years before Ms. Hayles book was published. Anyone using the book in their course work might want to think about this.
Rating: 3 / 5
#4 by Rodney Bryant on February 2, 2010 - 6:09 pm
HOW WE BECAME POSTHUMAN by N. Katherine Hayles (Chicago, $18, paper) explores the relation between the computer revolution and our changing ideas of what it means to be a human being. Her pet theme: how information became an entity in itself, divorced from the material that carries it, in both science and literature. Norbert Wiener meets P.K. Dick. (p. 178)
Rating: 5 / 5
#5 by J. Reznick on February 2, 2010 - 7:51 pm
This book is worth the effort. Or maybe all the effort you’ll put into this triggers a cognitive dissonance reaction: I just spent 4 hours reading one chapter, so it must have been good. Right? Right?
This book is good, if only for her obvious reverence for the cyberpunk grandaddy PKD (Phil K Dick if you don’t know already). Whether or not you accept her premise that we are already “posthuman” she considers her subject matter in a most interesting and relevent way, bringing in fiction that relates to the subject, as well as the history of computing and cybernetics (with some fun little anecdotes about the one and only Norbert Weiner). If you’re a geek or into future-minded philosophy, pick this one up. She makes some convincing arguments, it just takes a good long while to decipher what those arguments actually are.
Rating: 4 / 5