How We Became Posthuman
In "How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics," N. Katherine Hayles begins chapter four by introducing the reader to the first wave of cybernetics—the idea of what is "human" is a social construct with artificial divisions that give false boundaries between humans and our technology. She lists several examples, but essentially, when a person wears a hearing aid, they are joined in a single system with the technology they rely on. The general image of our bodies is limited, thinking that we are somehow separate and independent of the systems we rely on is faulty. However, if this is the case, are there any boundaries at all? Is there no division to where I end and my iPhone begins?
The idea of blurring the boundary between humans and technology is in a bumpy confluence with liberal humanism. Liberal humanism was central in shifting freedom and autonomy to people instead of authoritarians that maintained general control over the population. However, liberal humanism still maintained a very sharp division between what is human versus what is animal, environment, and technological. In the liberal humanism model, humans were not these things, but separate and distinct from these things. Yet, liberal humanism also contributed to decentralizing what is thought to be "human" by advocating for all humans to engage in enlightenment.
In chapter six, Hayles discusses the second wave of cybernetics. We can see that the divisions are not as distinct as originally thought. For example, even mathematics is not separate from human invention, but a production of human invention. Numbers are a concept derived from set theory, and set theory is a human invention making mathematics a technology, in the broadest sense. Mathematics is practical and useful because it works, but this does not mean it is independent from human invention. Math is a technology we use to describe the world and accomplish our own tasks.
The strange part is that the cybernetic discourse of complex systems is not simply an invention from reality but is reality. There is no third-party objectivity that we can point to and say, "Ah! That's it! Now, that is reality!" Reality itself is a product of our creation and organization, which includes animals, the environment, and technology. Furthermore, we are not separate from objective reality, but co-creators of an intersubjective reality in cybernetic discourse. This is a form of relational epistemology that moves into a posthuman approach of reality. This is a harsh criticism against the prevailing view of the existence of a scientific objectivity reality that we can cling to when things feel uncertain. What we have is abstractions from the observer that we share with one another through our interactions. We are in an interconnected living system and none of us lives in isolation.
