Katherine Hayles’ book, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Infomatics” was a fascinating read and deep dive into posthumanism, its implications, and the importance of the connection between science and literature in navigating our posthuman era.

To be honest, I never thought I would be able to define posthumanism or really understand what it entails, but Hayles’ piece was so engaging and reader-friendly that I was surprised by just how many connections I was able to make to my own experiences, literature, and media tackling these same issues of posthumanism.

A few semesters ago, I was enrolled in a course focusing on science fiction young adult literature.  We read a plethora of texts exploring the contexts and potential issues of scientific advancement, with a heightened focus on artificial intelligence.  Making connections to these texts, namely, The Six, by Mark Alpert, clarified and expanded many of the concepts and arguments presented by Hayles.

To give some background:

The Six throws readers into the tragic story of six terminally ill teenagers whose only hope of “survival” is to destroy their bodies and upload their minds to machines.  Their mission: Defeat Sigma, a rogue A.I. whose only mission is to kill off all other A.I.s and be “the best.”

In the novel, the protagonist, Adam, is given a choice to participate in this Pioneer Project.  He would have to allow his physical body to die so that his mind can be uploaded to a robot and, in effect, become an A.I. himself.  Adam is not the only one to face this decision, but he is the one with the most connection to this project (for more info on why, check out the book!).

In this YA novel, the boundaries between “cybernetic mechanism and biological organism” are blurred and erased.

“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” (3).

Adam receives incredible pushback from his mother, who is adamant that by going through this procedure, he will die.  Whatever is uploaded is merely a copy of who Adam once was, but no longer is.  Adam’s mom, who’s whole-heartedly against this procedure says to Adam, “The thing inside the machine would be a copy.  It might sound like you when it talks and even think of itself as Adam Armstrong.  But it wouldn’t be you” (76).

There’s a LOT to unpack here about humanity. Namely, are these Pioneers human anymore once their bodies have died?

Hayles comments on this dynamic by expressing “the intense anxiety that erupts when the perceived boundaries of the body are breached” (Hayles 23).  Reading this in conjunction with Adam’s mother’s statements stress the uncomfortableness of the blurring of these boundaries between robot and human.  It’s difficult to articulate why that awkwardness exists, and perhaps it is simply a result of considering something artificial as human.  Yet, what struck me in Hayles’ book was the statement that “even a biologically unaltered Homo sapiens counts as posthuman.  The defining characteristics involve the construction of subjectivity, not the presence of nonbiological components” (Hayles 4).

Posthumanism contains much more complexities and avenues than just the creation of the mechanically engineered human equivalent/cyborg.  It’s the very nature of subjectivity and how it plays into our everyday interaction with information and technology.  Another striking line from Hayles, “When information loses its body, equating humans and computers is especially easy” (2).  I find this to be absolutely true as a concept because when you imagine disembodied information, there are no concrete ties to that information making it distinctly human or technological.  In fact, I find it much more plausible that disembodied information be associated with computers than with the human mind.  When you approach information – and even consciousness – with this perspective in mind, I feel a lot of that anxiety described before abating.

I think there’s a lot of hesitation to cross the boundaries between humans and computers, not because of information, but because of the emotional attachments the embodied form incurs.  Take away the body, take away the emotion, yet, the information should still be the same right?  Hayles advises, “for information to exist, it must always be instantiated in a medium” (13).  Whatever that medium that may be, the information will still exist in the same manner.  So is there really a difference between human consciousness in different media?  Whether uploaded entirely to a robot or in pieces as humans write themselves into being on social media, posthumanist theory is critical in understanding how this information is created and transmitted and awards great insight into how we operate in both registers of reality and virtual existences.

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Just because this movie is so relevant to Hayles’ chapters and kept playing in my mind as I read (and because I love this man too much)

“My nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival” (5).