Download or read book The Uncertain Future of Empathy written by Elsa Bouet and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Un Certain Future of Empathy in Posthumanism Cyberculture and Science Fiction written by Elsa Bouet and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dystopian States of America written by Matthew B. Hill and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dystopian States of America is a crucial resource that studies the impact of dystopian works on American society-including ways in which they reflect our deep and persistent fears about environmental calamities, authoritarian governments, invasive technologies, and human weakness. Dystopian States of America provides students and researchers with an illuminating resource for understanding the impact and relevance of dystopian and apocalyptic works in contemporary American culture. Through its wide survey of dystopian works in numerous forms and genres, the book encourages readers to connect with these works of fiction and understand how the catastrophically grim or disquieting worlds they portray offer insights into our own current situation. In addition to providing more than 150 encyclopedia articles on a large and representative sample of dystopian/apocalyptic narratives in fiction, film, television, and video games (including popular works that often escape critical inquiry), Dystopian States of America features a suite of critical essays on five themes-war, pandemics, totalitarianism, environmental calamity, and technological overreach-that serve as the foundation for most dystopian worlds of the imagination. These offerings complement one another, enabling readers to explore dystopian conceptions of America and the world from multiple perspectives and vantage points.
Download or read book Cyberculture Cyborgs and Science Fiction written by William S. Haney II and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing a key issue related to human nature, this book argues that the first-person experience of pure consciousness may soon be under threat from posthuman biotechnology. In exploiting the mind’s capacity for instrumental behavior, posthumanists seek to extend human experience by physically projecting the mind outward through the continuity of thought and the material world, as through telepresence and other forms of prosthetic enhancements. Posthumanism envisions a biology/machine symbiosis that will promote this extension, arguably at the expense of the natural tendency of the mind to move toward pure consciousness. As each chapter of this book contends, by forcibly overextending and thus jeopardizing the neurophysiology of consciousness, the posthuman condition could in the long term undermine human nature, defined as the effortless capacity for transcending the mind’s conceptual content. Presented here for the first time, the essential argument of this book is more than a warning; it gives a direction: far better to practice patience and develop pure consciousness and evolve into a higher human being than to fall prey to the Faustian temptations of biotechnological power. As argued throughout the book, each person must choose for him or herself between the technological extension of physical experience through mind, body and world on the one hand, and the natural powers of human consciousness on the other as a means to realize their ultimate vision.
Download or read book Unveiling the Post human written by Artur Matos Alves and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This electronic book gathers twenty papers presented at the 6th Global Conference Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction, which took place in the Mansfield College of Oxford, between the 12th and the 14th of July 2011.
Download or read book Transhumanism and Posthumanism in Twenty First Century Narrative written by Sonia Baelo-Allué and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-05 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transhumanism and Posthumanism in Twenty-First Century Narrative brings together fifteen scholars from five different countries to explore the different ways in which the posthuman has been addressed in contemporary culture and more specifically in key narratives, written in the second decade of the 21st century, by Dave Eggers, William Gibson, John Shirley, Tom McCarthy, Jeff Vandermeer, Don DeLillo, Margaret Atwood, Cixin Liu and Helen Marshall. Some of these works engage in the premises and perils of transhumanism, while others explore the qualities of the (post)human in a variety of dystopian futures marked by the planetary influence of human action. From a critical posthumanist perspective that questions anthropocentrism, human exceptionalism and the centrality of the ‘human’ subject in the era of the Anthropocene, the scholars in this collection analyse the aesthetic choices these authors make to depict the posthuman and its aftereffects.
Download or read book After the Human written by Sherryl Vint and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It showcases how posthumanism has transformed the humanities and what new work is now possible in light of this unsettling.
Download or read book Our Posthuman Future written by Francis Fukuyama and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is a baby whose personality has been chosen from a gene supermarket still a human? If we choose what we create what happens to morality? Is this the end of human nature? The dramatic advances in DNA technology over the last few years are the stuff of science fiction. It is now not only possible to clone human beings it is happening. For the first time since the creation of the earth four billion years ago, or the emergence of mankind 10 million years ago, people will be able to choose their children's' sex, height, colour, personality traits and intelligence. It will even be possible to create 'superhumans' by mixing human genes with those of other animals for extra strength or longevity. But is this desirable? What are the moral and political consequences? Will it mean anything to talk about 'human nature' any more? Is this the end of human beings? Our Posthuman Future is a passionate analysis of the greatest political and moral problem ever to face the human race.
Download or read book Future Asians written by Claire Stanford and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Future Asians: Orientalism and Posthumanism in Twenty-First Century U.S. Science Fiction, I investigate the representation of Asians and Asian Americans in contemporary American science fiction. There is broad scholarly consensus that American science fiction of the early to mid-twentieth century responded to fears over immigration and overpopulation with overtly racist portrayals of Asian characters. I argue that science fiction of the early twenty-first century responds to global economic and technological conflict with a more subtle - but nonetheless racially coded - portrayal of Asian bodies as no longer entirely human. By examining these iterations of Asian posthumanism, my project contends with American science fiction's persistent Orientalist discourse; ultimately, I assert that this seemingly fantastical genre reveals pressing U.S. anxieties about rising Asia and its competitive impact on both global trade and technological innovation. Working at the intersection of science fiction studies, Asian American studies, and critical race studies, Future Asians aims to illuminate larger questions of race and futurity. Specifically, my dissertation examines the notion of the technological and biotechnological posthuman, which I define as mechanical imitations of the human (robots, artificial intelligence) and forms of the human that still rely on incorporating normal biological functioning of the human (clones, cyborgs). While these posthuman forms are often considered non-raced entities, I argue that science-fictional portrayals of the posthuman are not non-raced at all, but rather directly contend with contemporary racial biases and injustices. By examining three major tropes of Asian posthuman representation - the virtual avatar, the non-singular self, and the android - Future Asians investigates how contemporary U.S. science fiction employs the image of the posthuman either to reinscribe negative racial histories and stereotypes or to counter these histories. As the posthuman becomes a widespread theoretical concept across the humanities and social sciences, my study poses a critical intervention, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the posthuman that applies across the subfields of Latinx futurism, Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism, and Indigenous futurism. The first chapter, "Ready Player One and the Reassertion of United States Economic & Technological Supremacy" interrogates the posthuman trope of the virtual avatar. I argue that, by reducing the novel's Japanese characters to pre-modern Japanese tropes via their choice of samurai as their avatars, Ernest Cline portrays Japan as an economic and technological threat that has been contained, thus modeling a future in which American individualism wins out over Asian collectivism and reasserting U.S. supremacy. The second chapter, "Genre and the Generic Human in How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe," examines the posthuman trope of the non-singular self, represented in the novel through the science-fictional concept of the time-travel double. I argue that it is the very act of giving up the commitment to the Western notion of the individual self - through interacting with his time-travel double - that allows the protagonist to break free of the model minority myth and the pressures of assimilation for Asian immigrants to the U.S. Additionally, I argue that the novel's generic ambiguity challenges both the tropes of science fiction and the tropes of the immigrant narrative, formally underlining the novel's argument against assimilation by refusing to assimilate to either genre. The third chapter, "'In the future, no one is completely human': Posthuman Poetics in Sun Yung Shin's Unbearable Splendor and Franny Choi's Soft Science" looks at the posthuman trope of the android in two recent poetry collections. I argue that Shin and Choi subvert the tropes of the Asian posthuman through linguistic play, ultimately demonstrating a flexible notion of selfhood that not only transcends racial boundaries but also species boundaries and boundaries between the human and the mechanical. Finally, three interspersed interludes - Nuclear, Crispr, and Sex - consider contemporary - rather than science-fictional - technologies. In looking at nuclear technology, gene-editing technology, and sex doll/sex robot technology, I demonstrate that the posthuman is not purely a science-fictional concept, but rather is already ingrained in these contemporary technologies' relationship to the Asian body. By drawing on archival material, cultural criticism, and personal reflection, each of the three interludes grounding this project's concerns with the posthuman in the present - showing how the posthuman is not only relevant to our shared future, but to our current moment
Download or read book Posthumanism written by Mieke Mosmuller and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These transhumanists are not prepared to delve into the meaning and significance of the physical body itself. They simply want to get rid of it, having distilled from it what is most important to them: an algorithm based on computer science, which also contains certain creativity, as we know it in gaming. You have to be content with that creativity, further developed, of course. You then have to be happy with the unprecedented computing capacity as a basis for intelligence. Those future machine people, who will be something completely different from robots, will then take the place of biological humans.... When you meditatively absorb these insights, you find the opposite image and you more or less spontaneously arrive at the step in the development of humanity which is the "other half" of this and which still lies in a distant future. (Mieke Mosmuller) Imagine humanity in a distant future. How would human society look like? How would human beings think? And above all, what would the human form be? In the form of both lectures and conversations, Mieke Mosmuller reveals this "other half" of trans- and posthumanism. It is a spiritual vision of the future, not science fiction. This book was originally published in Dutch as Posthumanismus: Über die Zukunft des Menschen by Occident Media B.V., 2020.
Download or read book Ayn Rand and the Posthuman written by Ben Murnane and published by Palgrave MacMillan. This book was released on 2019-06-14 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ayn Rand and the Posthuman is a study of the American novelist's relationship with twenty-first-century ideas about technology. Rand wrote science fiction that has inspired Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, politicians, and economists. Ben Murnane demonstrates Rand's connection to, and impact on, those with a "posthuman" vision, in which human and machine merge. The text examines the philosophical intersections between Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and posthumanism, and Rand's influence on transhumanism, a major branch of posthumanist thought. The book further investigates Rand's presence and portrayal in various examples of posthumanist science fiction, including Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, popular videogame BioShock, and Zoltan Istvan's novel The Transhumanist Wager. Considering Rand's influence from a cultural, political, technological, and economic perspective, this study throws light on an under-documented but highly significant aspect of Rand's legacy.
Download or read book Virtual Futures written by Joan Broadhurst Dixon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-07-20 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virtual Futures explores the ideas that the future lies in its ability to articulate the consequences of an increasingly synthetic and virtual world. New technologies like cyberspace, the internet, and Chaos theory are often discussed in the context of technology and its potential to liberate or in terms of technophobia. This collection examines both these ideas while also charting a new and controversial route through contemporary discourses on technology; a path that discusses the material evolution and the erotic relation between humans and machines. Virtual Futures brings together diverse fields such as cyberfeminism, materialist philosophy, postmodern fiction, computing culture and performance art, with essays by Sadie Plant, Stelarc and Manuel de Landa (to name a few). The collection heralds the death of humanism and the ride of posthuman pragmatism. The contested zone of debate throughout these essays is the notion of the posthuman, or the possibility of the cyborg as the free human. Viewed by some writers as a threat to human life and humanism itself, others in the collection describe the posthuman as a critical perspective that anticipates the next step in evolution: the integration or synthesis of humans and machines, organic life and technology. This view of technology and information is heavily influenced by Anglo American literature, especially cyberpunk, Pynchon and Ballard, as well as the materialist philosophies of Freud, Deleuze, and Haraway, Virtual Futures provides analyses by both established theorists and the most innovative new voices working in conjunction between the arts and contemporary technology.
Download or read book Cyberpunk Cyberculture written by Dani Cavallaro and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2000-04-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cyberpunk and Cyberculture explores the work of a wide range of writers- Acker, Cadigan, Rucker, Shierley, Sterling, Williams and, of course, Gibson - setting their work in the context of science fiction, other literary genres, genre cinema - from Metropolis to Terminator to The Matrix - and contemporary work on the culture of technology.
Download or read book The Posthuman written by Rosi Braidotti and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-07-11 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Posthuman offers both an introduction and major contribution to contemporary debates on the posthuman. Digital 'second life', genetically modified food, advanced prosthetics, robotics and reproductive technologies are familiar facets of our globally linked and technologically mediated societies. This has blurred the traditional distinction between the human and its others, exposing the non-naturalistic structure of the human. The Posthuman starts by exploring the extent to which a post-humanist move displaces the traditional humanistic unity of the subject. Rather than perceiving this situation as a loss of cognitive and moral self-mastery, Braidotti argues that the posthuman helps us make sense of our flexible and multiple identities. Braidotti then analyzes the escalating effects of post-anthropocentric thought, which encompass not only other species, but also the sustainability of our planet as a whole. Because contemporary market economies profit from the control and commodification of all that lives, they result in hybridization, erasing categorical distinctions between the human and other species, seeds, plants, animals and bacteria. These dislocations induced by globalized cultures and economies enable a critique of anthropocentrism, but how reliable are they as indicators of a sustainable future? The Posthuman concludes by considering the implications of these shifts for the institutional practice of the humanities. Braidotti outlines new forms of cosmopolitan neo-humanism that emerge from the spectrum of post-colonial and race studies, as well as gender analysis and environmentalism. The challenge of the posthuman condition consists in seizing the opportunities for new social bonding and community building, while pursuing sustainability and empowerment.
Download or read book Posthuman Management written by Matthew E. Gladden and published by Defragmenter Media. This book was released on 2016-08-07 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the best practices for leading a workforce in which human employees have merged cognitively and physically with electronic information systems and work alongside social robots, artificial life-forms, and self-aware networks that are ‘colleagues’ rather than simply ‘tools’? How does one manage organizational structures and activities that span actual and virtual worlds? How are the forces of technological posthumanization transforming the theory and practice of management? This volume explores the reality that an organization’s workers, managers, customers, and other stakeholders increasingly comprise a complex network of human agents, artificial agents, and hybrid human-synthetic entities. The first part of the book develops the theoretical foundations of an emerging ‘organizational posthumanism’ and presents frameworks for understanding and managing the evolving workplace relationship between human and synthetic beings. Other chapters investigate topics such as the likelihood that social robots might utilize charismatic authority to lead human workers; potential roles of AIs as managers of cross-cultural virtual teams; the ethics and legality of entrusting organizational decision-making to spatially diffuse robots that have no discernible physical form; quantitative approaches to comparing managerial capabilities of human and artificial agents; the creation of artificial life-forms that function as autonomous enterprises competing against human businesses; neural implants as gateways that allow human users to participate in new forms of organizational life; and the implications of advanced neuroprosthetics for information security and business model design. As the first comprehensive application of posthumanist methodologies to management, this volume will interest management scholars and management practitioners who must understand and guide the forces of technologization that are rapidly reshaping organizations’ form, dynamics, and societal roles.
Download or read book Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America written by Edward King and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2017-07-03 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latin America is experiencing a boom in graphic novels that are highly innovative in their conceptual play and their reworking of the medium. Inventive artwork and sophisticated scripts have combined to satisfy the demand of a growing readership, both at home and abroad. Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America, which is the first book-length study of the topic, argues that the graphic novel is emerging in Latin America as a uniquely powerful force to explore the nature of twenty-first century subjectivity. The authors place particular emphasis on the ways in which humans are bound to their non-human environment, and these ideas are productively drawn out in relation to posthuman thought and experience. The book draws together a range of recent graphic novels from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, many of which experiment with questions of transmediality, the representation of urban space, modes of perception and cognition, and a new form of ethics for a posthuman world. Praise for Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America '...well-referenced and… well considered - the analyses it brings are overall well-executed and insightful...' Image and Narrative, Jan 2018, vol 18, no 4
Download or read book Network Aesthetics written by Patrick Jagoda and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term “network” is now applied to everything from the Internet to terrorist-cell systems. But the word’s ubiquity has also made it a cliché, a concept at once recognizable yet hard to explain. Network Aesthetics, in exploring how popular culture mediates our experience with interconnected life, reveals the network’s role as a way for people to construct and manage their world—and their view of themselves. Each chapter considers how popular media and artistic forms make sense of decentralized network metaphors and infrastructures. Patrick Jagoda first examines narratives from the 1990s and 2000s, including the novel Underworld, the film Syriana, and the television series The Wire, all of which play with network forms to promote reflection on domestic crisis and imperial decline in contemporary America. Jagoda then looks at digital media that are interactive, nonlinear, and dependent on connected audiences to show how recent approaches, such as those in the videogame Journey, open up space for participatory and improvisational thought. Contributing to fields as diverse as literary criticism, digital studies, media theory, and American studies, Network Aesthetics brilliantly demonstrates that, in today’s world, networks are something that can not only be known, but also felt, inhabited, and, crucially, transformed.
