The Politics of the Posthuman

"Yet the posthuman need not be recuperated back into liberal humanism, nor need it be construed as anti-human. Located within the dialectic of pattern/randomness and grounded in embodied actuality rather than disembodied information, the posthuman offers resources for rethinking the articulation of humans with intelligent machines" (How We Became Posthuman, p.287)

Introduction 1: Comments about Paper Writing

The first paper is due by Friday, October 17th, and you are more than welcome to complete it earlier. Reading over the proposed topics, and having learned from last year's first-essay experience, I offer the following comments/suggestions/pleas:

• Claims about the authors' views should be supported by references to specific sentences, passages or chapters in the works we've read by those authors.
• You should use either footnotes or endnotes to give the details of citations. Any standard format for those notes will do, as the goal of such citations is to let me (i.e. the reader) see the bases for your interpretations/allusions.
• Observe the slogan: "Every sentence an English sentence!"
• Remember that what makes writing papers a worthwhile exercise is the magic of creating a form of interpersonal communication the enjoyment/interpretation/meaning of which does not require the author's physical presence. I.e. I need to be able to understand what you're saying without your having to sit next to me while I read your paper.
• Write at least one draft and preferably several drafts. This allows you to loosen up a bit, get out of the "in this paper I will attempt" mode, and really work at composing the paper. As I mentioned, I am happy to read drafts in any form.
• Run spell checkers, and grammar checkers (even if you reject the suggestions of the latter), but please please please proofread your essay with human eyes/sense (your own or a friend's). One of the most frustrating experiences for a reader is to feel that more care is going into the reading of a paper than went into the writing of it.
• Try to write in a voice that you think is plausibly yours (rather than that of a Talking Head, Infomercial Host, or World-Weary Retiree, for example).

Introduction 2: Reflections on Michael Black's Topics

Before returning to Hayles' book, let's compare reactions to Prof. Black's talk last Thursday. Specifically:

• Aside from entertainment value, were there aspects of the presentation/discussion that you thought clarified or pointed up any of the topics/questions/issues we've discussed in class so far?
• If you had to write a reaction to Prof. Black's talk in the voice of Moravec, Arendt and/or Hayles, how would it go?
• Is there anything in Hayle's chapter on "Narratives of Artificial Life" which struck you as especially related to the scientific developments Prof. Black described?

How We Became Posthuman, chapters 9 and 11

"Thus the sciences of complexity articulated a limit on what reductionism could accomplish. In a significant sense, however, AL researchers have not relinquished reductionism. In place of predictability, which is traditionally the test of whether a theory works, they emphasize emergence." (pp. 231-232)

We'll begin by explicating this short passage from chapter 9, and try to explain how it relates to the conclusion of that chapter, the discussion of "distributed cognition" and Searle's "Chinese Room" example in chapter 11, the passage quoted at the beginning of today's notes (from p. 287), as well as Hayles final meditations on what we are to make of the posthuman.

From Persons to Politics: An Introduction to Unit Two of CHV

If Hayles encouraged us to think about the politics of the virtual, the next unit of the course asks us to think about the promise or peril of virtual politics. From the earliest days of the World Wide Web (only a bit more than a decade ago, after all), large numbers of politically-minded and civic-minded enthusiasts spoke of the coming of a new age of "digital democracy" and "virtual community"; a new age characterized by increased political participation, greater political awareness, and the promotion of political freedom and creativity. In Unit Two of CHV, we'll think about the substance of these claims, and read different visions of what democracy is and how information technology is related to its future.

For Next Time:: Read the first 104 pages of Andrei Cherny's The Next Deal.

Back to the Syllabus