The unbearable lightness

 In her book How We became Post-human, Hayles has examined the notion of  “how information lost its body, that is, how it came to be conceptualised as an entity separate from the material forms in which it is thought to be embedded”. She further suggests that as technology and the overall digital revolution involved, we are in the situation where the pattern/randomness binary is deemed to have privileges over absent/present. Information came to be seen as an abstract and absolute “truth” that is more essential than material instantiation. 

Hayles primarily uses contemporary literature, especially the cyberpunk/virtual reality to illustrate her points. However I couldn’t help but contemplating how it would apply to the world I’m living in. Moving from city to city, country to country, I have filled in countless application forms for new IDs. As someone who has a “wandering mind”, I lost my cards and passport more than once (six times in eight years, to be precise ). It was one of the most frustrating experience when it happened since it left me without any proof of who I am in the foreign land. The only way to get a replacement is to file more forms as well as provide other identification documents. The whole process of regaining my legitimate identity is clearly a information-dominated one, during which my body is discarded (except for the photos I’ve taken, which can be alternated anyway since it is digitised). Moreover, when going through the customs at the airport, I often get nervous when an officer starts examining my passport and giving me skeptical glances, as if he is matching the information to its material manifestation and the latter is less convincing. Apparently, the “I” that is encoded as informational patterns in the cyberspace that is regarded as more authentic and reliable than my own bodily presence. The society we inhabit seems to privilege the abstract as the Real, and downplay the materiality. One of the example used in the reading is Neuromancer, a novel written in 1984 by William Gibson, which push the post-human condition into its extreme.  The body existed outside of the cyberspace, is only considered as “meat”, of which the only function is to serve as a container for his consciousness, and “information is the putative origin, physicality the derivative manifestation”. The post-human body is just “data made flesh”.  As technology keeps advancing at today’s rate as well as seems to be heading toward this direction, is this our inevitable end? 


I found this Hayles’s writing can be seen as a cautionary tale for the information age where we are constantly overwhelmed by the speed and variety of technical development, trying our best to adopt and adapt new technologies, and for someone they are striving to make something better. Burke points out in his essay “Definition of man” that the last of the five attributes of what make us human is the notion that we are the only animal that are “rotten with perfection”. He quotes Freud saying that “the repressive instinct never cease to strive after it complete satisfaction”.  There is an “impulse” dwelled in us towards perfection.  I was wondering about why there are desires and interests in creating virtual reality,  to be a brain in a Cyborg or to upload one’s consciousness onto a machine. After going through novels and movies with related subject, one plausible reason I found is the fact that human body is considered to be the weakest link - vulnerable, lack of strength and mortal. The fear of death as well as the wishes of being omnipotent and immortal are rather primitive. However, in today’s age, empowered by technology, we’ve achieved some progress and opened up more potentials.  That being said,  any kind of technological development comes at a price, and sometimes it’s a price that we can’t afford. Technology determinism may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, even if happens, I’d like to believe that there will always be a way out of the matrix, getting unplugged.