An Extension of Humanity
Or, Go Go Gadget Theory
Maria's got it! The posthuman (or posthumanism) is not a replacement for (the) human(ism), but instead an extension of it.
I went off on a tanget as I was writing this (and I've erased that tangent).
Here's the thing, though, I think that the term posthuman does relate to the concept (much like the way in which femisism makes somewhat obvious what it means). It is not, however, a traditional "post-ing" (like postmodernism, poststructuralism, etc.). The "post" here might be viewed as completely temporal (as in the post hoc, ergo propter hoc falacy), rather than in a "what comes next" sort of way.
The real push here is to see that posthumanism follows and rearticulates humanism, but the posthuman condition is not appreciably different from the human condition. Understood from the perspective of humanism, posthumanism probably describes a very different world; understood from the perspective of posthumanism, it merely describes a very different worldview (in the sense of Weltanschauung).
In this sense, posthumanism is similar to postmodernism: those who subscribe (an horrific word, I know) to it see the world differently; those who don't subscribe think that those who do are trying to undermine all they've worked for. The world has changed slowly, but appreciably over time. But it's difficult to say, "(The) Postmoder(ism) began on VE day (or VJ day) in 1945." Just as it is impossible to say that the modern period began with Luther's theses in 1523, or with the Cartesian cogito (or with any other arbitrary date). In the same way, we can't really say when (the) posthuman(ism) began—as I've said: I, myself, believe that we've probably always been the way that posthumanism describes us, and that we've only really begun to realize it in the past 5 to 10 years.
The point of this last bit is to say that the dates we ascribe to other demarcations are only matters of convenience. Antiquity ended and modernity began over a number of years; modernity ended and postmodernity began over a number of years; posthumanism emerged from humanism over a period of years. All of these -isms and -itys reflect ways of knowing—they're more epistemologies and Weltanschauungen than anything else, and none of them could have emerged overnight, and none of them has every fully replaced what came before: antiquity is still with us, modernity is still with us, humanism is still with us, and posthumanism and postmodernity will probably always be with us, too. What's more, all of these things were with the ancients, moderns, and pre-posthuman postmoderns, too. What came before and what comes after are always with us, even if we don't know it yet.
Yes - I can beleive that we have always been posthuman. That is something I can accept. I cannot accept a divide between humanism and posthumanism. Because (if) the definition of posthuman is directly related to the information a human has, or even the technology they use - like sticks - (then) that definitely applies to humans throughout their evolution.
I think perhaps where we are getting off track is in the word posthuman itself. It seems that the word should be arbitrary. But we as first time readers of this are interpreting the word in terms of its relation to what it means to be human, and then trying to add something different - like computer tech. The word could just as (or perhaps more) easily be Informationism. Posthumanism is not like feminism - where the relationship between the word and the meaning sort of relate.
Posthuman does not even seem to be on the same kind of continuum as say Modernism and PostModernism. There are time periods for those. But then again, some do tend to apply postmodern theories to say the classical period. But for the most part, I think the definition Mike has given here is most effective for looking at this thing that is labeled as posthuman.
Posthuman Situation and Posthuman Condition
Here's the thing: we don't need Kate Hayles to tell us that there's a divide between the haves and the have-nots in terms of access. I mean, that's really pretty obvious, and it's tied to economics--whatever brand of capitalism you think is operant today. But remember, being posthuman (to Hayles, and to me, but what do I matter?) is not a matter of high-tech—or of any-tech—access; instead it's a matter of information access and, perhaps, a matter of awareness.
All of which is to saty that everyone who has any information at all—a position held by every human being—is posthuman. If a posthuman condition is tied only to being bound up in confluences of informational patterns, every "skin bag" (though not the "skin jobs") on the face of the planet is, and always has been, posthuman—there are no have nots(!).
Of course if awareness of your situation a system of informational patters among other systems of informational patterns, all of which constitute still other informational patterns, . . . well then, there are have-nots, but also rather-nots, . . . and I'm not sure what to make of that.
a response to the disembodied Maria
Maria (or the informational pattern that IS Maria) raised an interesting question: Is being posthuman just another way to exclude the have-nots? I guess Hayles would actually say yes, it excludes the have-nots by means of ACCESS as a substitute of PRESENCE. A follow-up question would be, given Hayles's emphasis on the historical contingencies of the situation in which any conceptualization (such as Shannon and Weiner's in the first wave vs. McKay's) gains recognition and popularity (in Shannon and Weiner's case, theirs became the industry standard), in what ways did/does this substitution respond to the U.S. techno-scientific culture in particular and to the global context in general and actually became/become part of that culture and helped/helps to shape it? (hmm...reflexivity...)
NO SEX, PLEASE, WE'RE POST-HUMAN!
Les particules elementaires, Michel Houellebecq's bestseller from 1998 which triggered a large debate all around Europe, and now finally available in English, is the story of radical DESUBLIMATION, if there ever was one. Bruno, a high-school teacher, is an undersexed hedonist, while Michel, his half-brother, is a brilliant but emotionally desiccated biochemist. Abandoned by their hippie mother when they were small, neither has ever properly recovered; all their attempts at the pursuit of happiness, whether through marriage, the study of philosophy, or the consumption of pornography, merely lead to loneliness and frustration. Bruno ends up in a psychiatric asylum after confronting the meaninglessness of the permissive sexuality (the utterly depressive descriptions of the sexual orgies between forty-somethings are among the most excruciating readings in contemporary literature), while Michel invents a solution: a new self-replicating gene for the post-human desexualized entity. The novel ends with a prophetic vision: in 2040, humanity collectively decides to replace itself with genetically modified asexual humanoids in order to avoid the deadlock of sexuality - these humanoids experience no passions proper, no intense self-assertion that can lead to destructive rage.
Slavoj Zizek: NO SEX, PLEASE, WE'RE POST-HUMAN!
As I sit here in my living room with the beginnings of a flu-like thing that my husband gave me, I wish that my information and knowledge could be separated from my body. Luckily, since we are now posthuman, I can just transfer my thoughts to this blog to avoid infecting the bodily members of the class.
What I think is most interesting about Hayles, is her discussion of the relationship between power and virtuality. She says -it is no accident that the condition of virtuality is most pervasive and advanced where the centers of power are most concentrated.- Then just above that, she reminds us that 70% of the people on this planet have never made a telephone call, much less participated in cyperspace.
So, then who are the we that became posthuman? Americans? Europeans? Or the select few in power?
I think what Hayles has to say is important, especially her points about what Alexis blogged, seriation, and about -seeing the world as interplay between informational patterns and material objects - But I still ask whose world? I am just not sure that I buy into the idea that the whole world is posthuman. Are Afghani refugees living in Pakistan posthuman? They have no food or water; they are seen as pests by the only people in the country that might be considered posthuman.
I guess it would be helpful to finish reading the book, but I am wondering so what?Is being posthuman just another way to exclude the have-nots. I was thinking about the movie Zoolander, when the reporter told Derek that the information and files were in the computer, he and his friend threw the computer on the floor, breaking it open, to find the files that they thought were inside. Sounds absurd and funny, but that may be how many people in the world would react to a computer - still not able to separate the physical from the virtual.
Anyway, I guess this is probably the Nyquil talking.
humanization of info
Humanization of info
The debate about whether info can exist on its own, independent from the substrates carrying it summarized by Hayles reminded me of some class discussion we had on the first day of an info design class I took for my Master's in tech comm... Some of us had issues with the very title of the course: info design. It has the connotation of info being an entity existing out there; what we do as tech communicators then is to take that entity and experiment with different ways of packaging it. Such a notion necessarily precludes any possibility of human agency in the construction of meaning while meaning, for many of us, is a defining characteristic of information.(I can see Shannon shaking his head in disapproval.)
According to Hayles, a major disadvantage of Shannon’s characterization of info as having “no materialiaty� and “no necessary connection with meaning� is its decontexualization and its failure to give proper consideration to the medium that carries the info. What I’d like to add to her counterargument, as I was thinking about the class discussion on the term “info design� I mentioned earlier, is a human dimension to info. Borrowing a term from Grassi, who talked about Vico’s humanization of nature (i.e., nature possesses a meaning only in regard to human needs), I think info needs to be humanized as well; any theorization of info has to take into account the role of human agents and human agency.
Connections
In my 106 class yesterday we were reading Aldo Leopold (an early preservationist). He discusses what he calls the paradox of conservation: that in order to conserve something you must destroy it (at least a little bit). Thus, in order to conserve land, you need to trek through it, analyze the various parts, and basically decide that the land is worth preserving. From there, you need to isolate that land, plunging the property into an artificial perfectness. In Hayles, I see a similar paradox at work. At an obvious level, the paradox is at play in the seriation on page 16. In order for technology to move forward we must get inside it, destroy it, and then move past. To extend this notion to ideas of embodiement, or at least to technologized consciousness," isn't there a notion of destroying the body in order to preserve the mind in some artificial or constructed (virtual) space. I know I am saying nothing new, but I just find it interesting how another branch of science-ecology-intersects with conginitive science and technology. I also see Hayles arguing for a reevaluation of embodiement (“embodiement has been systematically downplayed or erased in the cybernetic construction of the posthuman in ways that have not occurred in other critiques of the liberal humanist subject” 4). In effect, she is arguing for a technology-based preservation, where the landscape of information is being threatened (or has already been torn apart).
two cultures & some computer-human similarities
Hayles reminds me of C.P. Snow. The difference is that Snow highlights the gap between literature and science while Hayles seems to think they supplement each other in understanding human beings. The link is an interesting article by MIT research scientist Dan Dewey (July 1999) in which he discusses not only the two cultures, but also some computer-human similarities. Here is his own abstract of the paper:
“
"In his recent work Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, E.O. Wilson notes that not only does the gap between the two cultures of the Sciences and the Humanities described by C.P. Snow in 1959 continue to exist today, but that its very origin is unexplained. In this essay I describe a possible (scientific!) explanation for the existence of these two cultures."
"cyberspace": etymology and a question
From OED:
Cyberspace
The notional environment within which electronic communication occurs, esp. when represented as the inside of a computer system; space perceived as such by an observer but generated by a computer system and having no real existence; the space of virtual reality. Cf. virtual reality s.v. *VIRTUAL a. 4 g.
1982 W. GIBSON in Omni July 72/2, I knew every chip in Bobby's simulator by heart; it looked like your workaday Ono-Sendai VII, the ‘Cyberspace Seven’, but I'd rebuilt it so many times that [etc.]. 1984 Neuromancer II. iii. 52 Molly was gone when he took the trodes off, and the loft was dark. He checked the time. He'd been in cyberspace for five hours. 1991 H. RHEINGOLD Virtual Reality (1992) i. 17 Although I stayed in cyberspace for just a few minutes, that first brief flight through a computer-created universe launched me on my own odyssey to the outposts of a new scientific frontier. 1993 Guardian 18 Oct. I. 8/7 The search for a kidnapped girl from a small town in California has leapt into cyberspace as her picture criss-crosses the world's computer networks, databases and electronic mail systems.
It is interesting that "cyberspace" actually originated from science fiction. How much of our new vocabulary used to discuss technology came from sci-fi? Are authors of sci-fi semi-scientists, visionaries, creative writers, or all of those? In the first chapter, Hayles writes: "literary texts are not, of course, merely passive conduits. They actively shape what the technologies mean and what the scientific theories signify in cultural contexts" (21). One way of shaping what technologies mean, of course, is to provide the vocabulary.
Gender Inclusive Game Design
Thinking about cybertyping, I find it interesting that game developer Sheri Graner Ray has a new book out, Gender-Inclusive Game Design. Garner Ray has done and directed product development at companies such as Her Interactive and Sony Online.
What kind of effect can texts like this do to affect cybertyping in video games (which are often direct representations of cyberpunk narratives)? Or does the change need to be made somewhere else?
Garner Ray info
