Sunday, September 1, 2019
My opinion about Catherine Hayles’ book Essay
My opinion about Catherine Hayles’ book Introduction            I disagree with the conclusion of Catherine hayles book and her latest advice.The picture that Catherine Hayles frames is that human being fear to be post human .In her argument She puts information as the core that only requires a conveying media and that media can be machines or human being. She shows how post human is necessary by giving it a positive outlook than human. Hayles argues that human being will be replaced by post human and the human race will face extinction. In her conclusion she states that post human are superior than human being and goes further to feeble the human being by saying that they are not autonomous in thinking . In a further extent Hayles in her book says that computers machines and programs will wipe away the human race.There are many things I don’t agree with Catherine Hayles I will lay down my argument disagreeing with her argument.            Human being are superior over all creation and they cannot be replaced by any other creation.Catherine Hayles argues that human being will morph into something else, something like a cyborg where machines will be overall and incharge and commernder of the other creation.This view is far away from truth, human being cannot be replaced by a creation that has been made by Him. Human being were created to subdue the earth and all the other creations are inferior to Human. It’s not possible to create something and be inferior to it. God is superior to us and so we are superior to machines. Catherine Hayles needs to elaborate and explain why can we create something and it turns to our god.            Posthuman cann’t think as human being does. Hayles lays down her argument saying that post human do think as human being . This she tries to argue that the deeds and actions that can be done by a human being due to thinking can also be done by robot because it thinks too. Do posthuman have self will like human being does? This is a question not answered in her book. Human being thinks in a natural way and posthuman thinks as a result of radio frequency identification (RFID). There is a big gap between posthuman and human being and nothing can bridge this gap.            Looking at the contribution she made the last in her book , her ambition are much higher. The first chapter she read the book of Hans Moravec’s Mind Children:The future of robot and human intelligence and she got a shock. The thing that captured her mind was Moravec’s assertion which stated that near future the consciousness of human being will be transferred to that of computer.There are two prepositions that are implicated here; (1) That existence of information is not reliable to a particular substrate. (2) The consciousness of human being is information. These two preposition are the one that Hayles through her narrative contests three devoted topics; The cyborg emerged as a result of cultural artifacts, how the body was lost by information and the construction that resulted the emergency of post human.            Hayles goes further in defining post human using two other ways, first was that posthuman are susceptible, coordinating and self organizing its self in a larger system. She argues that we are dictated by the environment we live in and thus integrated into that environment. She says that human being needed posthuman and thus the technology is the one that pushes for it. The innovation is the one that created posthuman and human being now depends on posthuman. She alludes posthuman in a manner above it’s definition, she says that the information from body is tranferrable from body to machines.It’s very clear is literature and has no facts in it human and posthuman mutually require each other to survive but posthuman requires human to live.            Hayles opposes the formulation of the second definition of post human and endorsing the definition of the first one. She argues that we think of apocalyptic visions where machines will be equal and become our superior. Hayles didn’t see the danger to obviate the stated machines and the repercussion of changing definition. Hayles argument doesn’t give any hope for survival of human being, that’s very pathetic.            Another argument she grounds herself with is that there will be full integration of one’s self with a machine and that the content that evolution excluded. She says that body has a sediment history and it do have an architecture in it, a â€Å"physical structure whose constraints and possibilities have been formed by an evolutionary history that intelligent machines do not share.†( C. H ayles,284, 2009.) In my views, human being cannot be fully identified with machines.            Hayles did mention about Joseph Weizenbaum’s statement that making a judgement and the capacity to make is a matter that should be left as an ethical principle, to the human alone. I don’t agree. What are the impacts of feeding more and more information and functions to technology and computers? How is it possible for us to lose our humanity for we resign the skill to practice the decision of of a particular nature?            If we take machine and look at themselves, the analysis of Hayles shows that posthuman have the same consciousness as human and they help in our thinking and they do perform the functions that we don’t need to but quiet want to.Infact they do function and perform better than human being .But we should not forget where they originated from. All machines and their relatives they came from the effort of human mind production. Human being has created them to aid in maximizing his own efficiency and he have, with no doubt accomplished his motive. Without human being machines would not be in existence and thus for them to exist human being has to exist first and the cognition ability would not be there . Ayn Rand character has one that we can link to this art and says in Atlas Shrugged: â€Å"I thought†¦of the men who claim that machines condition their brains. Well there was the motor to condition them, and there it remained as jus t exactly what it is without man’s mind-as a pile of metal scraps and wires, going to rust.†(page 745, Atlas Shrugged) This statement show sense in Hayles and I agree on: Human is conditioned by machine and we appreciate them in our lives and enhance them but I differ in that human being is still dorminant . Machines without the human being they would go extinction and get to rust.            If the cyborg and the cyborg varieties were to exist as put by the Hayles they would still require human skills and characteristics for their ‘brain’ to function, to have conscious and to think like human being. Hyles didn’t explain this and how if human being were to go to extinction the post human would survive, else she have a task to do.            Hayles the premises that she posits as another cause of fear of post human is the liberal humanist opinion of the human kind matters autonomy. Human being are able to see all the possibilities which are open to choose and they have the will and they can synthesize these sources. Schopenhauer’s there is an outline in THE WORLD AS WILL AND REPRESENTATION(BOOKIII). Human being are able to think, they are able to process data , they are able to create it and pull judgements built on their feelings. This Information comes from several sources in machine but in human being they come purely on them. Machines they are devoid of thinking and they have no conscious like ours. Hayles in her argument doesn’t have the real world instances , and those that she uses are not very clear they are not specifically illuminating. In her early books she says that she finds saying that â€Å"Well my sleep agent wants to rest, but my food agent say s I should go to the store†( Hayles 2009,6).This is certainly an odd approach of talking and She draws a very significant deductions from it. â€Å" Each person ,†She claims, â€Å"who thinks this way begins to envision herself or himself as a posthuman collectivity, an ‘I’ transformed into the ‘we’ of autonomous agents operating together to make self†(Catherine. H, pg 6 2009) There are questions that rises about personal disorders of the multitude. The example of ability of multiple to celebrate and creatively dissociate leads to rejection of therapy that tries to integrate their adjusts. People definitely will be talking around themselves in a fresh ways. But moral agents asks what thinking together about themselves meant. Hayles put it that â€Å"serious consideration needs to be given to how certain characteristics associated with liberal subject, especially agency and choice, can be articulated with in posthuman context†(C atherine.Hayles, pg5, 2009) and she left it like that . She didn’t show any alternative of her implications.            In conclusion Hayles argument is lacking enough facts and is based in prepositions that she lays to win the heart of literature, and in my views she didn’t succed. If you consider streams with standing waves, which visibly forms the front side of the rocks which projects superficial above the water. They retain their normal shape and their normal integrity despite being changed by the molecules of water .I still find the machines being continuously changing their integrity but can’t replace human being and they can’t lead extinction of human kind. References Harrison, Ariane Lourie. Architectural theories of the environment: posthuman territory. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. Print. Hayles, N. Katherine. How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Print. Leithauser, Brad. Penchants & places: essays and criticism. New York: A.A. Knopf :, 1995. Print. Younkins, Edward W.. Ayn Rand’s Atlas shrugged a philosophical and literary companion. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007. Print. Bateson, Catherine. Being Bee. New York: Holiday House, 2007. Print. Gronebaum, Melissa. Arthur schopenhauers die welt als wille und vorstellung†. S.l.: Grin Verlag Gmbh, 2014. Print. Harrison, Ariane Lourie. Architectural theories of the environment: posthuman territory. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. Print. Hayles, N. Katherine. How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Print. Leithauser, Brad. Penchants & places: essays and criticism. New York: A.A. Knopf :, 1995. Print. Younkins, Edward W.. Ayn Rand’s Atlas shrugged a philosophical and literary companion. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007. Print. Source document
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