Posthumanity—Volatile
Bodies
First, the posthuman view
privileges informational pattern over material instantiation, so that embodiment in a biological
substrate is seen as an accident
of history rather than an inevitability of life. Second, the posthuman view considers consciousness, regarded as the seat of
human identity in the Western
tradition long before Descartes thought he was a mind thinking, as an epiphenomenon, as an evolutionary upstart trying
to claim that it is the whole show
when in actuality it is only a minor sideshow. Third, the posthuman view thinks of the body as the original
prosthesis we all learn to manipulate,
so that extending or replacing the body with other prostheses becomes a continuation of a process that began before we
were born. Fourth, and most
important, by these and other means, the posthuman view configures human being so that it can be seamlessly
articulated with intelligent
machines. In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and
computer simulation, cybernetic
mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals.
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999, pp. 2-3.
