How We Become Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics

Hayles, N. Katherine, How We Become Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1999. On line at link as of 4 July 2019.

Mainly a collection of Hayles's essays from the 1990s (see Acknowledgments, pp. ix-x), with a Prologue, Conclusion, and apparatus. An influential collection by an important scholar. 1. Toward Embodied Virtuality / 1 2. Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers / 25 3. Contesting for the Body of Information: The Macy Conferences on Cybernetics / 50 4. Liberal Subjectivity Imperiled: Norbert Wiener and Cybernetic Anxiety / 84 5. From Hyphen to Splice: Cybernetic Syntax in Limho / 113 6. The Second Wave of Cybernetics: From Reflexivity to Self-Organization / 131 7. Turning Reality Inside Out and Right Side Out: Boundary Work in the Mid-Sixties Novels of Philip K. Dick / 160 8. The Materiality of Informatics / 192 9. Narratives of Artificial Life / 222 10. The Semiotics of Virtuality: Mapping the Posthuman / 247 11. Conclusion: What Does It Mean to Be Posthuman? / 283

RDE, completing, 4July19