Summary for H. Katherine Hayles’ How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and
Informatics.
In Chapter 1, Hayles gives us the question of whether the
mind can be separated from the body, a notion that we work with throughout the book.
With all the materials Hayles read she realized that there were three stories:
how information lost its body, how the cyborg was created as a technological
icon and how a historically specific construction called the human is giving
way to a different construction that we will call the posthuman (2). Hayles
describes what posthuman is. She writes, “First, the posthuman view privileges
informational pattern over material instantiation, so that embodiment in a
biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an
inevitability of life. Second, the posthuman view considers consciousness
garded as the seat of the human identity… Third, the posthuman view thinks of
the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate” (2-3). Hayles
discusses issues that different theorists have with the posthuman. The anorexic
example is particularly interesting when considering the body as separate from
the mind. The core of her work is this: “Hence
my focus on how information lost its body…. If my nightmare is a culture
inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather
than the ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces
the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies
of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates
finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is
embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for
our continued survival.” (5). Hayles discusses how the posthuman and human
coexist with each other, how when cybernetics was first forming it gave us a
new way of looking at human beings, how cybernetics was born, when reflexivity
entered, as well as the second and third waves of cybernetics. Its important to
understand in this chapter that materiality and information are separate
entities. Virtual Reality is discussed in one section as well as feedback loop
perception. Skeuomorph, homeostasis, and reflexivity are terms discussed as
well. Information is discussed as a pattern. Hayles says that we can look at
her book in two ways: chronologically and narratively. She also says that we
can construct virutality “as a metanarrative about the transformation of the
human into a disembodied posthuman” but that we should be skeptical (22).
In “Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers” Hayles
explains that information is a pattern rather than a presence and that when we
can identify information as both a pattern and randomness it can help us
realize that noise can help a system reorganize at a higher level of complexity
(25). The chapter is primarily concerned with that the “shift toward
pattern/randomness and away from presence/absence, affects human and textual
bodies on two levels at once, as a change in the body…and as a change in the
message” (29). Hayles explains that we can’t think of the signifier as a single
marker, that the signifier can become the signifier, and that the longer the
chain of codes the more wild transformations that can occur. She focuses on
mutation and how it is decisive and crucial. One issue I had with the text and that I’ve been thinking about a lot
is when she says “A cyberspace body, like a cyberspace landscape, is immune to
blight and corruption” (36). I wonder if it really is immune though because she
later troubles the cyberspace body. It seems that it can shift and virus. She
discusses Gibson’s novels and the creation of cyberspace. She also discusses in
“Functionalities of Narrative” how informatics pushes the transformation of
narrator form speaker to absent and the narrator as one who manipulates codes.
I liked it when she wrote “The computer
molds the human even as the human builds the computer” (47) and also, that “Information, like humanity, cannot exist
apart from the embodiment that brings it into being as a material entity in the
world; and embodiment is always instantiated, local, and specific. Embodiment
can be destroyed, but it cannot be replicated. Once the specific form
constituting it is gone, no amount of massaging data will bring it back” (49).
I found the third chapter to be INCREDIBLY boring even
though its focus was on what made information more important than its
materiality and the Macy Conferences. And, I’m not going to lie…I’m going to
make my summaries of a few of these chapters pretty brief. When she discusses
how when we separate information from meaning it helps us not have to deal with
its changing values. She also relates that not everyone was ok with this. Some
wanted meaning to change with context. Shannon, Stroud, MacKay, Kubie and
McCulloch were major players in this chapter. The inclusion of the observer
became a major issue in cybernetics and one that Hayles later focuses on.
In the fourth chapter, Hayles discusses cyborgs and how it
disrupts a great deal: “Fusing
cybernetic device and biological organism, the cyborg violates the
human/machine distinction; replacing cognition with neural feedback, it
challenges the human-animal difference; …it erases the animate/inanimate
distinction…” (84). Wiener is a
major player in this chapter. She discusses his earlier work and then his work
after WWII when he questioned whether there are essential qualities that exist
in themselves apart from relations (91). He felt analogy and boundary work well
together. In his later work he asserted that “boundary formation and anlogical
linking collaborate to create a discursive field in which animals, humans, and
machines can be treated as equivalent cybernetic systems” (93). Wiener also felt
that entropy was the opposite of information. The discussion of borders was
interesting in this chapter. I wasn’t
quite sure as to what the savage was in this chapter.
Bernard Wolfe’s Limbo
is discussed in the fifth chapter of Hayles. How cybernetics problematized
boundaries in bodies, as well as cyborgs as living beings and narrative
constructions is discussed. Hayles writes that “the cyborg signifies something
more than a retrofitted human. It points toward an improved hybrid species that
has the capacity to be humanitiy’s evolutionary successor” (117). The
confrontation of cyborgs and literary bodies leaves neither unchanged.
In the sixth chapter, we are reminded about the work done
with frog vision. For some reason I remember reading about these studies when I
took psychology coursework during my BA. That the visual system of the frog
constructs reality is key to their findings. Reflexivity is a major part of
this chapter. The discussion of knowing whether others exist by experiencing
them in one’s imagination was interesting. Hayles believes that von Foerster
was greatly influenced by Maturana’s theory when he reconceptualized
reflexivity. Autopoesis is discussed in this chapter (self-making). The
observer is another issue discussed in this chapter and Maturana believes that
the observer is directly linked to what she is observing, or rather,
“structurally coupled” (142). He says that an observer of the same species is
seeing pretty much the same thing as those involved in whatever is being
observed. Allopoietic is also discussed as a term. Evolution in light of
autopoiesis is discussed toward the end of the chapter.
In Chapter 7, Philip Dick’s novels are dissected. Hayles
sums up the chapter toward the beginning when she states that Dick’s novels
link cybernetics to concerns such as capitalism, gender, entropy and
schizophrenic delusion, and fakery. The schizoid android is a major player in
this chapter. That what is artificial can be living is key to Dick’s work. I
don’t really like it when Hayles draws connections between Dick’s life and his
work, but I dealt with it. Hayles says that the android represents “loss of
free play, creativity, and most of all, vitality” (177). Hayles says that Dick
emphasizes reflexivity in his work.
Chapter 8, “ The Materiality of Informatics” was a chapter I
actually enjoyed. I enjoyed pretty much
8-END. Hayles intends to focus on a more flexible framework to think of
embodiment in an age of virtuality (193). She wants to integrate embodiment and
abstraction, as well as demonstrate how this integration framework is useful in
reading texts. Her discussion of philosophy and how philosophers are so caught
up in consciousness that the body isn’t taken seriously. Embodiment is
explained as “contextual, enmeshed within the specifics of place, time
physiology, and culture, which together compose enactment…Whereas the body is
an idealized form…embodiment is the specific instantiation generated from the
noise of difference” (196). Embodiment is destabilizing and performative. “The body produces culture at the same time
that culture produces the body” is one of my favorite citations on page
200. Incorporating and inscribing practices are made distinct by Hayles. I
didn’t find the audiotape section to be particularly interesting.
Chapter 9 focuses on artificial life. Artificial life is
dividied into three research fronts: wetware, hardware, and software. The
discussion of Ray was really eerie and fascinating at the same time. I kind of
didn’t want to read it. That the organism is the code and the code is the
organism later in the chapter was also weird. How the observer is approached as
“cut from the same cloth” was also interesting. AL as a successor to AI is
discussed: “The machine becomes the model for understanding the human. Thus the
human is transfigured into the posthuman” (239). One section that I found
particularly interesting was when they were discussing on page 242 how really,
we don’t have to reproduce to reproduce anymore. Later, when she writes that
“human mind without the human body is not human mind” I wonder if some would
argue that isn’t so.
In the final chapter we cover several novels that articulate
posthuman. The first text, Blood Music, made
me wonder about whether the posthuman needs to or should be or is aware of the
human. In Terminal Games we must
consider what happens when the posthuman is a threat and what that means for
humans and acceptance. In Galatea 2.2 highlights
gaps between human and computer consciousness. In Snowcrash we are asked to
consider whether we have always been posthuman. I liked all of Hayles questions
at the bottom of p281 and I think they would be fruitful for class.
In the conclusion I
was led to question what intelligence is when Hayles discusses the
articulation of humans with intelligent machines (287). We are so caught up in
what intelligence really is. I don’t think we even know what constitutes an
intelligent human, let alone an intelligent machine.
Instead of a Meme or photo, I would like to add a link to the trailer for Her. I think its a great film and it was one I thought about for the duration of reading Hayles' work.
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