How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics by N. Katherine Hayles
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

The strengths of this book come from its three guiding questions (or stories) on virtual reality: 1) how information lost its body, or how it became a separate entity from the material in which it's embedded, 2) how the cyborg was created and how it became a "technological artifact and cultural icon" after World War II, and 3) how the "historically constructed" idea of the human is influenced by a different construction called the posthuman. These are A+ questions.

Hayles' narrative pivots on the first story above; she suggests that human consciousness is actually separate from humans. Basically, it might be possible to put human consciousness into a corporeal form that's not a human body. The age-old theme of human mind versus body isn't new, but it's complicated by the digital age because we may be able to test it by inserting human consciousness into computers. This begs the questions: should we? and to what extent is consciousness affected by our physical construction?

Hayles buoys up her narrative with painstaking history, attention to detail, and quality connections. 3.5/5 stars.

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