This is probably one of the hardest books I have ever read--with no background in either philosophy or cybernetics, much of what Hayles discusses is just plain incomprehensible. I also found it difficult to accept the idea of humans already being "post-human." If you are interested in deep philosophical writings on technology and the human condition, with links to literature, read this. If you don't really care about the post-human, skip it.

This book is worth the effort. Or maybe all the effort you'll put into this triggers a cognitive dissonance reaction: I just spent 4 hours reading one chapter, so it must have been good. Right? Right?

This book is good, if only for her obvious reverence for the cyberpunk grandaddy PKD (Phil K Dick if you don't know already). Whether or not you accept her premise that we are already "posthuman" she considers her subject matter in a most interesting and relevent way, bringing in fiction that relates to the subject, as well as the history of computing and cybernetics (with some fun little anecdotes about the one and only Norbert Weiner). If you're a geek or into future-minded philosophy, pick this one up. She makes some convincing arguments, it just takes a good long while to decipher what those arguments actually are.

In this book of panoramic scope Hayles considers no less than the fate of the human race. In a rich and detailed discussion ranging from the science fiction of Greg Bear and Philip K. Dick to the science of Norbert Wiener's cybernetics and Claude Shannon's information theory, Hayles traces the changing conception of human consciousness and claims that a great many of us are already posthuman. A posthuman is someone who has been reconstructed in some sense, either physically or mentally, such that he or she exceeds, or believes they can exceed, the boundaries of a human. About ten percent of Americans can be considered cyborgs in the technical sense by virtue of having some kind of artificial implant - these people would qualify as posthuman since they have compensated for some limitation of their bodies through technological augmentation. However, Hayles claims that to be posthuman no prosthesis is necessary, simply the way in which we think about ourselves as conscious agents needs to change. The advent of Shannon's information theory has led to the modern convention of treating information as if it were entirely non-physical. If this idea is applied to the information in our heads - that is, the collection of memories that make each of us unique - then we quickly arrive at the conclusion that our consciousness can be uploaded into a computer, decanted into a robot-body, or even backed-up onto computer disk, giving us eternal life.

This is the story of how information lost its body and it is an idea which is now well established in Western culture and technology. Yet, Hayles believes it to be misguided. Any informational pattern, be it pebbles on the beach or electrons whizzing across the internet, must have a physical embodiment to exist. The importance of embodiment is also being discovered in fields such as neurology and experimental robotics. A surprisingly large amount of the information processing essential for being a responsive agent in the world goes on in body parts such as nerves, the spine and the proprioception of joints - our powerful human consciousness is a relatively recent add-on.

Hayles argues that future posthumans will not be the ethereal information-beings of much of current science fiction, but they will certainly have a much more intimate relationship with computers than we do today. In terms of information flows, a collection of humans and computers contains no boundaries between one and the next. As computers approach the complexity of our bodies and information becomes more important to our work and leisure, humans and computers will become more compatible with each other and there will be an increasing potential for one to collapse into the other. Whether this is to the detriment or betterment of humanity represents a cross-roads which urgently needs to be addressed. Hayles is well aware that technology issues such as these currently concern relatively few people - the majority of the world's population has yet to make their first phone call. Yet, now is precisely when such issues need to be aired before our posthuman futures are set in stone as either assimilated components in a vast machine or as free agents with powerful human-integrated technology at our disposal.

What shocked me was when the book started by talking about chaos and buddhist philosophy. This is not a book that will teach you the basics on fractals, nor is it an advanced book that will teach you how to run an experiment on chaos. I don't really know what this book is but whatever it is, it is INTERESTING. I was not expecting such a different topic base. Apparently, this book is a collection of essays, all based on chaose but from non-mathematical perspectives.

This 'pamphlet' surprises you immediately, it is a black-covered hardback with a lovely feel and design that says this book is different from other books. Pages of shiny paper (you can't write on them) and blocks of text that zoom out at you, or that are printed right up to the page edges, secret inscriptions, screen shots and new terminology introduced as underlined CAPITALS. The outside of the book reflects what the inside of the book is saying, before you even read a word. Hayles contends that the materiality of the work is important to the experience of it and that works in different media require their own media specific analysis (MSA).

The 'I' that writes is never the 'I' that is written and so N Katherine Hayles chooses a character 'Kaye' to tell of her journey of discovery from childhood to the present. However in doing so it was more than a little reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland as the naïve young Kaye skipped through science and art and arrived at electronic textuality. And when she arrived at this wonderland she found that all she had thought of her world had been turned upside down.

"Lulled into somnolence by five hundred years of print, literary studies have been slow to wake up to the importance of MSA. Literary criticism and theory are shot through with unrecognized assumptions specific to print. Only now, as the new medium of electronic textuality vibrantly asserts its presence, are these assumptions clearly coming into view." (pp 29-30)

But I am not convinced about the importance Hayles' places on the materiality of works of literature. I think Hayles, and nearly every other student of literature over the last fifty years received a very narrow education as to what constitutes a literary work, a very rigid print-centric view. Digital texts have made her realize that a work can have other representations. Young Kaye skips backwards to see what in the past she overlooked, and sees that the materiality of print all along. She concludes that a media specific analysis of works is required, so that the inscription technology is taken into account in the interpretation of the work.

In a past persona of 'komninos the professional spoken word performance poet', I was fully aware of the prejudice that exists within the academy which privileges print over all other material actualizations of poetry. Personally I think if a work gives me a poetic experience then it is a poem irrespective of the presentation/distribution medium. For me poetry is an immaterial thing, a virtual thing (virtual in the Deleuzian sense) an unsolvable problematic with many actualizations in many different media.

Anyway this is a good introduction for print-centric lovers of literature to the possibilities of books beyond what we traditionally think of as books. It is also a great way of introducing computer-phobes and sceptics to the mixed semiotic systems that constitute the literary experience in media other than in print. N Katherine Hayles has been one of the earliest and most active supporters of digital literatures or 'technotexts' as she calls them, and in sharing her discoveries through a fantasy and honestly through her persona Kaye, she makes the transition a little easier for others who want to understand.

"Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days." Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Komninos Zervos
Lecturer,
Convenor CyberStudies Major,

School of Arts
Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus
Queensland, Australia