Toward embodied virtuality -- Virtual bodies and flickering signifiers -- Contesting for the body of information : the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics -- Liberal subjectivity imperiled : Norbert Wiener and cybernetic anxiety -- From hyphen to splice : cybernetic syntax in Limbo -- The second wave of cybernetics : from reflexivity to self-organization -- Turning reality inside out and right side out : boundary work in the mid-sixties novels of Philip K. Dick -- The materiality of informatics -- Narratives of artificial life -- The semiotics of virtuality : mapping the posthuman -- Conclusion : what does it mean to be posthuman?
Summary
In this age of DNA computers and artificial intelligence, information is becoming disembodied even as the "bodies" that once carried it vanish into virtuality. While some marvel at these changes, envisioning consciousness downloaded into a computer or humans "beamed" Star Trek-style, others view them with horror, seeing monsters brooding in the machines. In How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles separates hype from fact, investigating the fate of embodiment in an information age. Hayles relates three interwoven stories: how information lost its body, that is, how it came to be conceptuali
