WEEK 5 - BODIES & IDENTITY

After reading Hayles and watching Her and Hyper-Reality I kept thinking about how we all have multiple identities. There is the one we present online and our digital identity. Then there are the ones we use in real life like a work identity a school identity a personal identity an artist identity and more. The more we move into the future the more these identities start to merge. There have been times I have been called or referred to by my social media handle in real life. Hayles talks about information losing its body and how identity becomes more about patterns and data than flesh. In Her Theodore falls for Samantha even though she has no body because she adapts to his needs. Hyper-Reality shows a chaotic world where your identity only exists if the system sees you. Both show how our different selves are already shaped and starting to merge through tech.

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NOTES From Reading

• Turing Test – shifts focus from embodied intelligence to symbol manipulation.

• Moravec Test – uploading consciousness into machines.

• “You are the cyborg, and the cyborg is you.”

• “Information lost its body.”

• “Represented bodies” vs “enacted bodies.”

• “The body is the original prosthesis.”

• “Flesh-eating 90s.”

• “Data made flesh.” (Gibson, Neuromancer)

• “Recognize and celebrate finitude.”

• Consciousness = minor “sideshow,” not core identity

• Liberal human → posthuman shift

• “Represented body” vs “enacted body”

• shares w/ humanism: erases the body

• danger = posthuman repeats old erasure

• Hayles wants a posthuman that keeps flesh in the picture

three threads:

1. how info became disembodied

2. cyborg as tech + cultural icon

3. human → posthuman shift

NOTES From HER (2013)

• the ad sells it like a lifestyle upgrade

• “first artificially intelligent operating system”

• learns and adapts “like a human”

• customizes itself to you → asks questions to “know” you

• Theo chooses male or female voice → picks female

• “I can understand you and understand your needs”

• no body, but immediate personality + emotion

NOTES from HYPER-REALITY Short Film (6mins, 2016)

• AR everywhere → constant overlays on the world

• reality = game interface, ads, pop-ups, notifications

• identity verified through system → can’t function without it

• shopping, navigation, work all mediated by virtual layer

• voices + prompts telling you what to do → loss of autonomy

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CONTEXT Homework (due Tuesday 08/05)

• READ - Prologue (4 pages) & Ch.1 Toward Embodied Virtuality Excerpt (5 pages) of How We Became Posthuman - Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics Literature and Informatics (1999) by Katherine Hayles

• WATCH – Her Movie Clip (9mins, 2013)

• WATCH – HYPER-REALITY Short Film (6mins, 2016)

• POST - Using Hayles’ “How We Became Posthuman” text to inform your thoughts, describe how well you think either of the two video pieces above represent our individual identities and relationships today. Feel free to write as much (max 600 words) or as little (min 100 words) as you like.