{"product_id":"b0026reaf6","title":"How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHayles 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 construction of the cyborg; and the dismantling of the liberal humanist subject in cybernetic discourse, along with the emergence of the posthuman.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRanging widely across the history of technology, cultural studies, and literary criticism, Hayles shows what had to be erased, forgotten, and elided to conceive of information as a disembodied entity. Thus she moves from the post-World War II Macy Conferences on cybernetics to the 1952 novel  Limbo  by cybernetics aficionado 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAlthough becoming posthuman can be nightmarish, Hayles shows how it can also be liberating. From the birth of cybernetics to artificial life,  How We Became Posthuman  provides an indispensable account of how we arrived in our virtual age, and of where we might go from here.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"ANT","offers":[{"title":"Ebook","offer_id":52821500395736,"sku":"YSL39993","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0835\/3356\/2072\/files\/61qtMSmBSBL._SY1500.jpg?v=1793105170","url":"https:\/\/www.bookmebay.com\/products\/b0026reaf6","provider":"BookMebay","version":"1.0","type":"link"}