by N. Katherine Hayles (Author)
Separating hype from fact, this text investigates the fate of embodiment in the information age. It relates three interwoven stories: how information lost its body, that is, how it came to be conceptualized as an entity separate from the material forms that carry it; the cultural and technological constuction of the cyborg; and the dismantling of the humanist subject in cybernetic discourse, along with the emergence of the posthuman . Ranging across the history of technology, cultural studies and literary criticism, the text shows what had erased, forgotten, and elided to conceive of information as a disembodied entity. The author moves from the post-World War II Macy Conferences on cybernetics to the 1952 novel Limbo by Bernard Wolfe; from the concept of self-making to Philip K. Dick's literary explorations of hallucination and reality; and from artificial life to postmodern novels exploring the implications of seeing humans as cybernetic systems.
Format: Illustrated
Pages: 364
Edition: 74th ed.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 15 Feb 1999
ISBN 10: 0226321460
ISBN 13: 9780226321462