Books

Books : reviews

N. Katherine Hayles.
How We Became Posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics.
University of Chicago Press. 1999

In How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles investigates the fate of embodiment in an information age. Ranging widely across the history of technology and culture, Hayles relates three interwoven stories: how information lost its body, that is, how it came to be conceptualized as an entity separate from material forms; the cultural and technological construction of the cyborg; and the dismantling of the liberal humanist subject in cybernetic discourse.

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.

N. Katherine Hayles.
Unthought: the power of the cognitive unconscious.
University of Chicago Press. 2017

In Unthought, N. Katherine Hayles bridges disciplines to reveal how we think without thinking—how we use cognitive processes that are inaccessible to consciousness yet necessary for it to function.