User:Lauren.dimonte/sandbox

I would like to edit the N. Katherine Hayles article. The existing article on Hayles has been listed as Start-Quality, and could be improved by adding more information on her books and other academic projects. By adding to this article I hope to learn more about the range of Hayles' work, particularly on topics such as cybernetics, informatics and digital media. Additionally, since this Wikipedia page is the top hit when you Google Hayles it may be helpful to provide summaries of some of her major publications for those conducting internet research.

LD 15:58, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Human and Posthuman
Hayles understands "human" and "posthuman" as constructions that emerge from historically specific understandings of technology, culture and embodiment; "human and "posthuman" views each produce very specific models of subjectivity. Within this framework "human" is aligned with Enlightenment notions of liberal humanism, including its emphasis on the "natural self" and the freedom of the individual. Conversely, Posthuman does away with the notion of a "natural" self and emerges when human intelligence is conceptualized as being co-produced with intelligent machines. According to Hayles the posthuman view privileges informational over materiality, considers consciousness as an epiphenomenon and images the the body as a prosthesis for the mind . According to Hayles, in the posthuman view "there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation..." The posthuman thus emerges as a deconstruction of the liberal humanist notion of "human."

Embodiment and Materiality
Despite drawing out the differences between "human" and "posthuman", Hayles is careful to note that both perspectives engage in the erasure of embodiment from subjectivity. In the liberal humanist view, cognition takes precedence over the body, which is narrated as an object to possess and master. While popular conceptions of the cybernetic posthuman imagine the body as merely a container for information and code. Noting the alinement between these two perspectives Hayles uses How We Became Posthuman to investigate the social and cultural processes and practices that led to the conceptualization of information as separate from the material that instantiates it. Drawing on diverse examples, such as Turing's Immitation Game, Gibson's Neuromancer and cybernetic theory Hayles traces the history of what she calls "the cultural perception that information and materiality are conceptually distinct and that information is in some sense more essential, more important and more fundamental than materiality." By tracing the emergence of such thinking, and by looking at the manner in which literary and scientific texts came to imagine, for example, the possibility of downloading human consciousness into a computer, Hayles attempts to to trouble the information/material binary and in her words, "...put back into the picture the flesh that continues to be erased in contemporary discussions about cybernetic subjects.”