Please post your after class summary of the reading and lecture today on N. Katherine Hayles’ “Toward Embodied Virtuality” as a comment to this blog post.
Also, try my suggestion to write a one sentence summary of all of the readings so far this semester. Have a copy of the syllabus at-hand so that you can follow the order of the readings. Consider the connections that you can make between the readings. Remember that I selected the readings to create a kind of story–a narrative thread–for the class.
In N. Katherine Hayles, “How we became Posthuman, Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics,” she begins by recounting her shock after reading Hans Moravec’s Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence. What struck her as particularly objectionable was Moravec’s assertion that in the near future human consciousness will be transferable to a computer. She addresses two main objectives, the subject and the object. Generally the observer is the subject and has consciousness and has a sense of self. External things are objects. Subjectivity is the action in discourses that produce individual subjects. Subjectivity is one’s point of view, experiences, hegemony etc. Hayles builds challenges the liberal humanism philosophy. The objectivist view sees information flowing from system to observers. The notion of feedback can loop through the observers, drawing them in to become part of the system being observed. Liberal Humanism is the idea that an individual has a mind that is privileged over the body. Hayles argues we are Posthuman because human intelligence is co-produced with machines, making a different a different subject. Posthumanisn privileges information over materiality. Hayles argues that consciousness is an epiphenomenon, a secondary effect or by product that arises from, but does not causally influence a process in particular. The body is prosthesis for the mind, and the mind matters. The body is secondary. Hayles sees no clear difference between bodily existence or computer simulations. Posthuman comes about from using Derrida’s deconstruction of liberal humanism notion from cybernetics. Hayles goes on to say that cybernetics was born when nineteenth-century control theory joined with the emerging theory of information. Cybernetics is coined from the Greek word for “steersman,” cybernetics signaled that three powerful actors, information, control, and communication, were now operating jointly to bring about exceptional combination of the biological and the mechanical. Hayles challenged the idea that there is discontinuity. Ideas of embodiment and materiality challenge the idea that there is a discontinuity between ideas and materiality. Hayles argues that the notion of virtuality is a cyborg phenomenon experienced by the individual whose identity is extended or manipulated through his or her interaction with technology. She further argues that we cannot have virtuality without a body.
In the article “How we became Posthuman, Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics,” by N. Katherine Hayles she begins by recalling her feelings about Hans Moracvec’s Mind Children: The Future Robot and Human Intelligence. She was pretty surprised by the story. What caused her to be surprised was the way Moravec believes how the human consciousness will be able to be uploaded to a computer which is completely mind bobbling. She explains her thoughts which are the subjective and the object. The person is the subject and has a way of conscious thought while being aware that they are humans. Her explanation of subject is the person and the stuff he goes through which is experience, views, etc. She sees the way we cooperate with machine it’s like we co-exist therefore she sees how information just flows through us and the system. She believes how the way we observe the data we are receiving we are being part of a system being observed. Hayles explains how the machines we create is a cooperation between human intelligence and machines. Hayles also tells us how she believes there’s no difference between human reality and a digital simulation. The body doesn’t matteraccording to Hayles it’s the mind that has the most significances. Hayles explains cybernetics and how its upbringing of the three ideas of information, control and communication. These 3 types of thoughts influence us users as a cyborg since we are hybrid in a way the way we interact with technology. She explains how us being a cyborg is the same and we cannot have any type of interactions without a body.
In N. Katherine Hayle’s “How We Become Posthuman” Chapter 1, “Toward Embodied Virtuality” Hayles talks about how she realized science is another aspect of culture and embodied into our technology. She asks, how do these technology affect our language, restructure our thought and identity? This is where she brings up the post human. She first explains the subject and the object. The observer is the subject, consciousness and forms a sense of self based on experiences. What’s external to subject are objects meaning that they are not apart of the subject. The objects are being observed by the subject. Then she discusses subjectivity which is one’s point of view. Hayles says this idea came from the enlightenment period. She goes on to talk about liberal humanism. This is the idea that the individual has a mind that’s privileged over the body, “I think therefor I am”. She relates this back to the post. She says that it’s human intelligence that coproduced all intelligent machines. The post human privileges information over materiality. Information is data that provides some sort of meaning, while materiality is the physical thing. Post human comes about from the deconstruction of the liberal movement notion of the human from cybernetics. Cybernetics is the study of feedback systems. Hayles challenges the idea promoted by the cybernetics that there is a discontinuity between information and materiality. Information is more important than materiality. In the end Hayles calls us post humans, we are now fundamentally changed by our technology.
In the article “How We Became Posthuman” by N. Katherine Hayles talks about how our bodies interact with technology is what makes us posthuman. A posthuman is a person that is combined with intelligent machinery. Some characteristics that these post-humans possess are the ability to privilege information over materiality, which means that they appreciate knowledge over a handbag. The second characteristic that the consciousness is an epiphenomenon, which is a secondary, bi-feed that arises from our conscious but does not cause an event. Our body moves because our brains tell us to move therefore, our bodies are secondary to our minds. The third characteristic is the posthuman deconstruction of the liberal humanism notion of the human cybernetics. Cybernetics is the study of feedback systems and they believe that the person you create online is better than your organic form. Hayles disputes that by saying with our physical bodies we couldn’t interact with the virtual world. Virtuality to the author means an experience that a cyborg has experienced through their connection with technology. If we didn’t have hands we couldn’t touch a keyboard to view the cyber world. To be posthumans it’s essential the mind and body be one. Being a posthuman does mean that people have a strong bond with technology but it doesn’t have to take over our mind and bodies. Although we are cyborgs it doesn’t mean we have to lose our sense of self just to fall to the feet of technology.
In “How We Became Posthuman” N. Katherine Hayles shares her disbelief about humans being compared to robots. After she read “Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence” written by Hans Moravec, she shares that this book struck her as a nightmare because she couldn’t find it possible that the human mind could be separated from the body, and even remain unchanged. Hayles found this to be so bizarre that it led to a six year journey of her learning about the history of cybernetics, information technologies, along with other things. It then unfolded into three interrelated stories, more importantly, “how a historically specific construction called the human is giving way to a different construction called the posthuman.” Hayles goes on to explain what a posthuman is, “In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals.” The posthuman is simply human intelligence that is co-produced with the intelligence from machines. This relationship with technology has become so profound that it essentially created a new body which is known as the posthuman. Here, with the concept of a posthuman, Hayles explores an idea similar to Donna Haraway and Bruce Mazlish, in which they all inevitably believe that we as the human race are all machines, and that there is no way to separate us or distinguish us from each other. They all in a way believe that we cannot function with technology, and that it will consume us until we’ve reached the point that we will become cyborgs and posthumans.
In the article “How We Become Posthuman” Chapter 1, Toward Embodied Virtuality” Hayles argues that unlike cybernetic fantasists who embrace the liberal, humanist ideal of mind-body duality, this very bold idea from the Enlightenment that our minds are separable from our bodies, there exists a discontinuity that between information and materiality presumed can be separated from its material substrate (how its stored). Wherein quote erasing the physical body a medium of intangible essence such as the human consciousness can be downloaded onto a desktop. Materiality is necessary for information, the body is necessary for ourselves as human beings. Information relies on physical media for storage and for human bodies our brains interface with information technologies. Hayles wants to “put the body back into the picture” She disagrees with Moravec who sees the mind as separate from the body. She believes we are becoming posthuman, a subjective embodiment of humans merged with technology. Once the subject comprising all the aspects of a human are deconstructed, characteristics of posthumans are more evident. The study of feedback systems generates the notion of liberal humanism is called Cybernetics. Without our physical bodies interacting with the world would be impossible. “In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals.” Through her eyes cybernetics turns the body into a series of mechanisms operating in place of our natural systems. Consciousnesses in a epiphenomenon resulting from a collective bi-feed of external input.
During Tuesday’s lecture we reviewed N. Katherine Hayle’s “How We Became Posthuman, Virtual Bodies, Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics” where she talks about the relationship shared between humans and intelligent machines. Hayles first informed the reader to Alan Turing’s Imitation Game, an exercise used to determine whether a machine is capable of executing tasks that require upper level thinking skills. Hayles moves on to discuss a passage that she came across in Hans Moravec’s “Mind Children The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence” that she found to be disturbing. Moravec, an author and a scientist, expressed that it would only be a matter of time before human consciousness could successfully be downloaded to a machine, which lead Hayles to conduct research of her own into the field of cybernetics, the study of feedback loops. Hayles learned that there were other educated individuals who, like Moravec, had subscribed to similar theories relating to virtual embodiment. They believe that information is privileged over materiality; information could be successfully transferred from one material substrate to another. Hayles informs the reader of the three repeated themes that she came across in her research where 1) information lost its body, 2) the creation of the cyborg during the post-World War II era, and 3) the human is giving way to what she calls the posthuman, the manifestation of where intelligent humans and intelligent humans meet. The concept of the posthuman picks up where we left off with Bruce Mazlish’s “The Fourth Discontinuity” and Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto”. Hayles expresses that the relationship shared between humans and technology is interconnected and should be respected and treated as such.