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Cyborg & Book

Of all the reflexive conceptions that spiral through Katherine Hayles How We Became Posthuman one is especially apparent, although unacknowledged. This is the dependence of the narrative on an interplay of hundreds of conceptual works encountered as embodied in physical books. In a way, her path is paved with books.

This circumstance is another evidence of Hayles thesis that embodied systems engender realties. The FotB motif here, Codex, Companion of Consciousness, presents further questions. Why are books there? Did they emerge on their own, congregate in libraries and do they now engender their own special future? And, as a side effect, did they invent readers as their companions?

In the FotB perspective we cannot discount books as media alone. They are more like cyborgs. In the context of reading modes we have already noticed that books, in the scroll format, both pre and post date reading. Isn’t it also possible that they convey to us conceptual works immune from the jeopardy of bionic presentation? Such observerless systems would be a nifty trick and a good joke on the universe. And they are already there, being themselves.

Perhaps books confirm that the universe that we can discover is already information. They also shift (to paraphrase Hayles) an insular definition of ourselves as authors and readers, to a definition of our juxtaposition with books. The separate definitions must meet and the emergent understanding is out of our control.

“In contrast to the circular processes of Humberto Maturana’s autopoiesis, the figure most apt to describe the third wave (of cyborg emergence) is a spiral. Whereas the second wave is characterized by an attempt to include the observer in an account of the system’s functioning, in the third wave the emphasis falls on getting the system to evolve in new directions. Self-organization is no longer enough. The third wave wants to impart an upward tension to the recursive loops of self-organizing processes so that, like a spring compressed and suddenly released, the processes break out of the pattern of circular self-organization and leap outward into the new.” p.222

Evidentially the future between ourselves and books is spiral bound. I imagine Katherine Hayles applying post-its to library copies and applying her own system of margin commentary to her own books. I imagine her library study and her haptic dependencies on physical books. Her on-line research and author interviews are networked to physical books as well.

She is a gymnastic interpreter and her leaping concepts bring readers to a verge of duress and vertigo. My copy of her book looks like it has passed through a tornado. There was a storm in the book.

elucidation of autopoietic reading

"Traversing this path, the "doing" of the reader-the linear turning of the pages during the reading-is to become a kind of "knowing" as the reader experiences the organization characteristic of autopoiesis through textual structure that circles back on itself." p.151 Katherine Hayles; How We became Posthuman. Hayles confirms a haptic cycle for the act of reading and mentions that "these encoded experiences bubble up into language".

FotB has mentioned the linkage of handling objects and conveying concepts. Here is a short collection of encodements:

"grasp a concept"

"get a grip on yourself"

"cast a doubt"

"pitch a product line"

"handle a situation"

"point out an error"

"toss out an idea"

even, "tickle your fancy". Send more!