In the conclusion to her book Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, Katherine Hayles introduces the term ‘posthuman’, putting it forth as the predominant state of Man vis-à-vis our current position in the trajectory of anthropological history. Donna Kiser provides what may be the most succinct definition for the concept of Hayles’ version of “posthumanism”, terming it “an attitude on how to deal with the limitations of the human form. It is the vision of how to move beyond those limits by the radical use of technological and other means”.
If we were to adopt “transhumanism” (as Wikipedia defined it) and/or Kiser’s definition, to seek to be post-human would be to, as humans, attempt to make use of and evolve with technology and our environment. “The body is the net result of thousands of years of sedimented evolutionary history”, Hayles argues, and in today’s day and age the computer is the machine which defines our current period in history.
One article which I have read posits that technology is becoming merely an extension of our human selves, and our interactions with it and with others have changed dramatically because of the way the Internet is becoming a depository for information which would have previously been necessarily stored in our brains’ memories. As such, our brain processes naturally extend themselves to make use of the Internet and the computer, transforming us from depositories to processors of information. just as we would, for instance, take upon a bionic limb and use it in a way as if it were natural (should we unfortunately need one).
Another way in which we are becoming posthuman is the way in which we enter into symbiotic relationships with intelligent machines. When communicating with our friends online, the ‘like’ button on Facebook, net-speak like “LOL” and “ROFL”, smiley faces and emoticons, and the short forms like “RT” on Twitter – all constitute utterances or symbols which while meaning nothing in and of themselves, their emotional resonance can be understood, becoming a kind of symbolic language which we adopt as extensions to ourselves – a form of symbolic language which we now all know and understand.
All of us who are interconnected by technology and embrace it can be considered to be “posthuman”. We are not at the end of humanity, as some may fear, but simply taking on a new form of humanity where computers do not wipe us out, but merely become incomprehensibly fused into our lives and beings.
And most predominantly responsible for this, like it or not, is the creator of the first Personal Computer with a graphical UI – Steven Paul Jobs. This is not even to mention the music player which irrevocably altered the music industry and the phone which changed all phones. Rest in Peace, and thanks for everything.
