How We Became Posthuman by N Katherine Hayles
Separating hype from fact, this text investigates the fate of embodiment in the information age. It 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 constuction of the cyborg; and the dismantling of the humanist "subject" in cybernetic discourse, along with the emergence of the "posthuman". Ranging across the history of technology, cultural studies and literary criticism, the text shows what had erased, forgotten, and elided to conceive of information as a disembodied entity. The author moves from the post-World War II Macy Conferences on cybernetics to the 1952 novel "Limbo" by 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.James B. Smith is a distinguished research professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, and N.Katherine Hayles is a distinguished research professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. Duke University's Emerita Professor of Literature. Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious (2017) and How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (1999) are two of her books.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780226321462 |
| ISBN 10 | 0226321460 |
| Title | How We Became Posthuman |
| Author | N Katherine Hayles |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | The University of Chicago Press |
| Year published | 1999-02-15 |
| Number of pages | 364 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |