A book titled How We Became Post Human: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics was originally published by Chicago University Press in February 15, 1999. The author of the book, N. Katherine Hayles is a specialist on connections among literature, science and technology in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. She was Professor of English at University of California, Los Angeles when she wrote this book. This book is the first book to trace development of posthumanism beginning from cybernetics and became cornerstone of book to get definition of posthumanism while exploring cultural and literary meaning. The book How We Became Post Human won the Rene Wellek Prize for the Best Book in Literary Theory for 1998-99.

Her other famous books are How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis, Nanoculture: Implications of the New Technoscience, My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts. Most of them are focused on analyzing the relationship between printed book media and computer code. Recently, she is expanding her study to the influence of digital media on human cognition.

Katherine Hayles was motivated by the book Mind Children by Hans Moravec, where he conceived of downloading human consciousness into a computer. Hayles was shocked by this scenario that diminished human intelligence only to informational pattern and dealt the meaning of being ‘human’ can be profoundly altered (Hayles, 134).

There were already discussions about the next type of human being, which is posthuman, going along over some academia. The two most frequently appeared area regarding posthuman was biological and cybernetic area. Biological interventions into human body, such as cloning, gene therapy, artificial wombs and cybernetic interventions which reform the human body or developing artificial life in evolutionary image were objects of researches. Both areas were deeply influenced by thoughts that treated human spirit and physical body as information: biology, through seeing DNA as an informational code while cybernetics, through envisioning systems as constituted by the flow of information through them. They both already had informational worldview as precondition. (Hayles, The Posthuman Body: Inscription and Incorporation in Galatea 2.2 and Snow Crash. 241) Nevertheless, Hayles worked with more emphasis on cybernetic rather than biological. She mentioned on interview that she chose cybernetic over biological strain since she personally felt limitation on time to acquire sufficient background for both and she was more familiar with cybernetic-type concerns (Hayles).

Recently, there are various cutting-edge technologies that are constantly developing and making boundaries between human, animal and machine obscure. For example, development of Artificial Intelligence is now threatening human’s position in modern society. Thinking about cybernetics and posthuman might help us to find more clear boundaries between real life (human and animal) and machine. In addition, even though initial concept of cybernetics almost died out as independent discipline on its own, it currently found its home in many different disciplines (Hayles). Therefore, studying on these concepts might help understand latest issues in wide spectrum.

In this book titled How We Became Posthuman, Katherine Hayles uses word ‘we’ which is plural and ‘became’ which is past tense in title, to point out that the issue of ‘posthumanism’ is for everyone living same era and our form of existence already went over human and changed to ‘posthuman’.

Through the whole book, Hayles describe the history of ‘cybernetics’ which is a basis of posthuman, by presenting both cultural and technological history. Especially, in this first chapter, Toward Embodied Virtuality, she put emphasis on explaining three waves of cybernetics and applying to literary texts that reflect on cybernetic theory.

Regarding the definition of posthuman, Hayles mentions four points with answering ‘What is the posthuman?’ question. Firstly, according to her, posthuman view set importance on informational pattern over material instantiation. Therefore, biological embodiment is considered as not inevitable thing. Second, posthuman see consciousness is only epiphenomenon and subservient one. Third, in posthuman view, we are all in the process of manipulating ‘body’ since we were born, so replacing and extending body is just a process of doing it with prostheses. As a fourth point, posthumanism believe that human being can be perfectly integrated with intelligent machines. Consequently, posthuman can restructure human as a new agent without raising intrinsic difference between physical body and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human objectives (Hayles, 4).

Hayles’ idea of posthuman does not require the subject to be a literal cyborg (Hayles, 4). That is to say that even Homo sapiens with artificial organ or without any biological modification can be regarded as posthuman. The criteria to define posthuman is not existence of nonbiological elements but the way subjectivity is formed. In cybernetics, human beings are interpreted as a set of informational processes (Hayles, 4). Since where the information is inhered in is not significant, body is not an essential part in cybernetics theory. This is in accordance with predecessor, liberal humanist since they also emphasized on cognition over embodiment. Writer William Gibson even depicted the body of posthuman as ‘data made flesh.’ However, Hayles raise an objection to the idea that the meaning of body is fading, and she indicates that breaking traditional view of human can be an opportunity to redeem the meaning of body.

The author organizes three waves in discussion about this complicated interplay between embodiment and disembodiment in cybernetic. At first, from 1945 to 1960, homeostasis, which is the ability of living organisms to maintain steady states in capricious environment was central concept. Researchers who dealt with this issue, for example, Nobert Wiener and Warren McCulloch, were gathered for Macy Conferences on Cybernetics and they extended the idea of homeostasis to machine by coming up with feedback loops. Second-wave cybernetics revolved around reflexivity, from 1960 to 1980. Reflexivity here meant the movement whereby that which has been used to generate a system is made, through a changed perspective, to become part of the system it generates (Hayles, 8). Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, which extended the reflexive turn into clearly presented epistemology that considered the world as a set of informationally closed systems, was published during this second-wave. The notion of autopoiesis became important because it brought several changes. It appeared to change cybernetic paradigm inside out and also altered what circulates through the system to make it work as a system (Hayles, 11). Third-wave cybernetics highlights virtuality from 1980 to present. Creatures with life forms, which is informational code were considered to evolve on their own initiatives.

In the perspective of viewing information as pattern and free object from material world, it can be immortal. Thus, if we can be the information, we can achieve immortality.

However, there’s constraint that information has to be embodied in a medium in order to exist. Following chapters in this book illustrates what had to be omitted to make information free from body.

Virtuality, which is the cultural perception that material objects are interprenetrated by information patterns (Hayles, 13), plays off the duality of information and materiality. In most times, virtuality is carried out with computer simulations having feedback loop along with computerized image. This being so, Hayles mentions that Virtual Reality (VR) technology is impressive since they make world of information exists parallel to the real world.

In addition, she specifies ‘seriation’ which means a set of attributes of an object that change like overlapping replication and innovation over time. Conceptual fields experience shifts like material changes in artifacts. Other term she brings up is ‘skeuomorph’ which is a design feature copied from a similar feature in another object, even when it is not functionally necessary.

In this section, Hayles concludes by suggesting that living in a condition of virtuality implies we participate in the cultural perception that information and materiality are conceptually distinct while information is more important than materiality.

Another way to think about posthuman is suggested in this part, which is thinking narratively. According to Hayles, with several examples, such as Bernard Wolfe’s Limbo and Philip Dick’s novels, literary texts seem to play central role in displaying narrative about body of information, cyborg body and posthuman body. They are not passive conduits, but actively shape what the technologies mean in cultural contexts. Those literary texts often reveal the complex issues tied up with conceptual shifts and technological innovations (Hayles, 24).

There are numerous discussions over How We Became Posthuman. Of course, there are praise to her writing over this unfamiliar notion, posthuman. She explained it in very approachable voice to let her readers easily understand what she is talking about. Especially, she arranged three waves of cybernetics very well by pointing out and comparing important theorist during each period. Keywords she came up with was clearly explained, for example, in three-wave, homeostasis, reflexivity and virtuality as a keyword.

As cutting-edge technologies using artificial intelligence, such as AI assistant, smart speaker, which seem to think and communicate well with human, become highlighted in every aspect of our daily lives, debate over posthuman is definitely needed. Accordingly, publication of this book, especially this chapter was very essential to this modern world.

However, since she mentions about idea that there’s no fundamental difference between teleology robot, computer simulation, cybernetics mechanism and human being with real flesh, there are some ethical questions and worries about human dignity. Also, if technology develop enough to make these things fully happen, there might be a lot of confusions about identity of existence. Moreover, since posthuman view our body is just one of organs that we manipulate through our entire life, it seems like caution regarding modification of is lacking. There’s also fear of birth of extremely transformed human and how we should deal with it if this becomes reality.

When she mentioned that ‘we’ already ‘became’ posthuman, it is her inviting every reader to this dispute. Therefore, it would be better if the author mentioned about what posthuman we have to be and what mindset we have to keep in ourselves to get closer with ideal posthuman form.

Her concept of posthuman has been applied to interpreting actual modern artworks. For instance, she lectured at international symposium ‘Gift of Nam June Paik 9: Coevolution - Cybernetics to Posthuman’ with topic of ‘Inside Out, Outside in: Exteriorizing Cognitions and the Installations of Nam June Paik’. Nam June Paik’s cybernetics was defined by relationships among human, machine and art and he realized this with his artwork ‘Robot Opera’. There were interpretations of posthumanistic perspective with his work, by discussing ‘ensemble of human-machine’ and ‘externalization of cognition’.

Moreover, there is a ‘hologram human’ project going along by a Russian businessman named Dmitry Itskov. This project aims to completely duplicate human cognition to make immortal body, which can be perfect model for posthuman based on cybernetics. It seems like another attempt based on the desire to go beyond human capacity, which has been authors’ imaginations in various fictions and goal for many scientists.

Even though, the idea of posthuman is being favorably accepted and applied by contemporary people, there are some concerns about it. Hans Moravec adverted that there is paradox with artificial intelligence, which is that ‘contrary to traditional assumptions, high standard reasoning requires very little computation, but low standard skills require tremendous computational resources to be completed’. With regard to this paradox, there are opinions that it might be impossible to get immortality by copying entire human and applying those data into a machine. In other words, we can’t just say that copying human cognition(information data) into a robot by just freeing it from its original container will produce undying human, since robots may ‘imitate’ human very precisely but can’t be ‘human’ by itself.

Hayles, Katherine. "How We Became Posthuman: Ten Years On" Interview by Arthur Piper. Paragraph 33.3 Sep. 2010

Hayles, Katherine "Posthumanism, Technogenesis, and Digital Technologies: A Conversation with N. Katherine Hayles" Interview by Holger Potzsch. Fibreculture 23 .2014

Caldwell, L. (2018). N. Katherine Hayles. [online] Nkhayles.com. Available at: http://nkhayles.com/ [Accessed 13 Dec. 2018]

Seongeun, Kim. Translator. "Inside Out, Outside In: Recursive Dynamics in Posthumanism and in Nam June Paik's Artworks," Nam June Paik Art Center Publication, 2017

Hayles, N. Katherine. "Afterword: The Human in the Posthuman." Cultural Critique, vol. 53, 2003, pp. 134-137.

Hayles, N. Katherine. “The posthuman body: inscription and incorporation in Galatea 2.2 and Snow Crash.” Configurations 5 2 (1997): 241-66.