article: The Soul of a New Machine

[pynchonoid]

The Chronicle of Higher Education
>From the issue dated January 31, 2003
 	
The Soul of a New Machine
Once a speculative idea, the cyborg is now a familiar
subject in the humanities
By SCOTT McLEMEE

Cyborgs are hacking into the intellectual mainframe.
They have taken over  cultural studies, established a
colony in the English department, and -- wet circuits
glistening -- started to invade anthropology. (The
media-studies people never had a chance.) Intimate
couplings of flesh and technology, cyborgs dismantle
old ideas about "nature" and "culture," "man" and
"machine," scrambling them together in encrypted
patterns that can scarcely be imagined by "humans"
-- to use another terribly old-fashioned word ... 

Not so fast! After all, there are at least a few
meat-based hominids left in academe. But outsiders
curious about recent developments in the humanities
may be excused for thinking they have wandered onto
the set of a science-fiction movie. A scan of recent
titles reveals an abundance of books drawing on what
might be called "the cyborg concept" -- the idea that
people and technology are converging and merging,
perhaps even already inextricably fused. What was once
a speculative notion about the shape of things to come
has become a normal part of the conversation, at least
in some quadrants of scholarly life. [...]

continues:
http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i21/21a01401.htm

-Doug



=====
<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com