Michael liked on YouTube: Blue Pill or Red Pill – The Matrix
Following on from deconstructing the idea that agency lies with either ‘human’ or ‘machine’, and looking at distributed cognition (Hayles 1999: 288), I reflect on ‘the problems of the real and human agency in contemporary critical theory’ as I watch this classic clip from The Matrix and read Dana L. Cloud’s 2006 article ‘The Matrix and Critical Theory’s Desertion of the Real’…
Michael liked on YouTube: Blade Runner – Voight-Kampff Test
The Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner – testing whether are they a ‘replicant’ or a ‘human’… but why should it be one or the other? Why ‘human’ or ‘machine’? Are not the boundaries blurred?
Watching this clip while contemplating on this and diving into the readings from Hayles, Miller, Haraway and others…
Michael liked on YouTube: Rosi Braidotti: “Revolution is a fascist concept”
Michael liked on YouTube: Donna Haraway. Cyborgs, Dogs and Companion Species 2000 2/9
Michael liked on YouTube: N. Katherine Hayles interview with Todd Gannon
Michael liked on YouTube: Rosi Braidotti: What is the Human in the Humanities Today?
Michael liked on YouTube: Rosi Braidotti Posthuman Feminism
This is the first of a few videos I came across under the broad theme of posthumanism, which I’m diving into this week.
Michael liked on YouTube: Feedback loops: How nature gets its rhythms – Anje-Margriet Neutel
While reading the Towards embodied virtuality chapter in N. Katherine Hayles’ How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics (1999), I found the above video helped me to begin thinking about the concept of feedback loops.
As I consider further the blurring of boundaries between human and machine, I read the below from Hayles (1999: 2):
‘Central to the construction of the cyborg are informational pathways connecting the organic body to its prosthetic extensions. This presumes a conception of information as a (disembodied) entity that can flow between carbon-based organic components and silicon-based electronic components to make protein and silicon operate as a Single system. When information loses its body, equating humans and computers is especially easy, for the materiality in which the thinking mind is instantiated appears incidental to its essential nature. Moreover, the idea of the feedback loop implies that the boundaries of the autonomous subject are up for grabs, since feedback loops can flow not only within the subject but also between the subject and the environment. From Norbert Wiener on, the flow of information through feedback loops has been associated with the deconstruction of the liberal humanist subject, the version of the “human” with which I will be concerned. Although the “posthuman” differs in its articulations, a common theme is the union of the human with the intelligent machine.’
(Hayles 1999: 2)
Michael liked on YouTube: N. Katherine Hayles • Why We Are (Still) Posthuman
Ahead of the course officially beginning tomorrow, I’m liking/saving/sharing this lecture from N. Katherine Hayles as we explore posthumanism during our first block on cybercultures.