Posthumanism and Technology

What if death, disease, and even biology itself were just problems waiting to be solved..? Futurist, thinker and inventor Ray Kurzweil thinks they are - and he’s built a career predicting the moment when humans and machines will merge. In this episode, I have a mull about Kurzweil's key works, especially The Singularity Is Near (2005) and its 2024 sequel The Singularity Is Nearer . Kurzweil claims...

In this episode, I return to Alan Turing’s 1950 essay in Mind " Computing Machinery and Intelligence " –  a foundational text in the history of artificial intelligence, but also one that is far stranger, more playful, and more haunting than we might anticipates. This is the essay where Turing famously asks, "Can machines think?" But rather than define thinking, he proposes a ga...

On this episode I take a fresh look at how we think about technology by exploring David Edgerton’s old but updated book The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900. Rather than celebrating the latest inventions as revolutionary breakthroughs, Edgerton argues that we should pay closer attention to the technologies that persist - those that are used, maintained, repaired andadapte...

In this wide-ranging conversation, I met with acclaimed literary theorist, philosopher and technology scholar N. Katherine Hayles, whose pioneering work has reshaped how we understand the boundaries between humans and machines, cognition and computation, biology and code, artificial intelligence and artificial life. We primarily discussed Katherine's new book Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with...

In this episode I have a think about maverick scientist James Lovelock and his ideas about Gaia, artificial intelligence and his predictions about the coming age of hyper-intelligent machine. f you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy  here  at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Phil...

The Novels of William Gibson William Gibson is a pioneering science fiction novelist. He is most renowned as one of the great cyberpunk novelists as well as for for coining the term "cyberspace" in his debut novel, Neuromancer (1984). His work explores the intersection of technology, society, and human identity, anticipating the rise of the internet and virtual reality. With a cyberpunk...

In this audio essay I think about the ecological musings of Pope Francis from his encyclical letters Laudato Si : On Care for Our Common Home and Laudato Si: On theClimate Crisis. Generally, I try to figure out what the pope’s theory oftechnology is. Pope Francis is an advocate for environmental stewardship and he emphasizes the moral imperative of addressing climate change, environmental degradat...

On this audio essay I have a good mull about the value of ethics for thinking about the environment. I discuss the limits and benefits of conventional forms of Practical Ethics and Environmental ethics, the limits of moral agency, how to connect ethics to technology. The following thinkers and writers come up –Donna Haraway, Arne Naess, Peter Singer, Aldo Leopold, David Wallace-Wells. Building on...

On this podcast I return to and have a mull about Donna Haraway's idea of the cyborg, how to differentiate it from the robot, how different models of biology inform our thought, our identity, and how she responds to accusations of post-truth. The interview with Haraway which I draw on is available here . These lectures are brought to you by Staffordshire University's Philosophy team. Come...

On this episode, I conclude my discussion about the metaverse with a reflection on Lyotard's philosophy. While Lyotard died in 1998 his prognostications about technology, capital, economics are searingly insightful and relevant. Lyotard suggests perhaps our best chance for emancipating ourselves from the dangerous dispositions of our tools is to embrace an aesthetic confrontation with the tech...

In this and the next episode I talk about how technological convergence drives the metaverse, the pursuit of virtual embodiment and how Lyotard might think of the metaverse. The texts this week are Lyotard's " Can Thoughts Go Without a Body ." Also, Mark Zuckerberg's interview with The Verge is worth a look. During the recording my mic quit, so the last 10m or so were automatical...

In this lecture I talk about Nick Bostrom's version of post-humanism. I explain his ideas, using his Bostrom's " Future of Humanity " essay as a jumping off point. I also explain Bostrom's distinct rationalist version of post-humanism, I talk about what he has to say about values, how he tackles common-sense objections to post-humanism, and I wonder towards the end about some...

This lecture, I look at Han’s notion of  ‘psychopolitics.’ Psychopolitics is the affective moods which besiege human beings as a direct result of contemporary techno-politics. More specifically, I will look at how Han explains what he calls the transparent society which is the primary driver of affective psychopolitics. Secondly, I will explain how the psychopolitics generated by new technolo...

Byung-Chul Han's work attempts to make sense of a number of things, what life is like in the late capitalist societies of the 21st century, the affective consequence of technological acceleration, how mental health has deteriorated in Western democracies, and the deleterious consequences of freedom and positivity. In this lecture, I will begin by explaining how Han approaches the question of time....

This week I want to primarily explain how Zuboff charts how the insights of behaviourist psychology were radicalised into surveillance capitalism. Specifically, I look at how Zuboff critiques B.F Skinner’s behaviourism, the psychological method through which leading technology companies have since extrapolated means of behaviour modification and a politics of absolute social control. Secondly, I l...

This week we are going to explore Shoshana Zuboff’s major recent work Surveillance Capitalism . In SC Zuboff does something really interesting and innovative. Zuboff believes that we do not really have the right concept or ideas for the effects which have been wrought on us by the internet revolution. While we say and are aware of words like ‘big data,’ ‘e-commerce,’ ‘encryption’ and ‘authenticati...

N. Katherine Hayles in her more recent work expands on the work initiated in How We Became Posthuman. Turning her attention to human consciousness she explains how consciousness itself is increasingly distributed across all the technical systems which modulate our behaviour. as Hayles sees it, we have to accept that cognition and human agency are distributed across quite obscure technical networks...

In the last lecture we explored how Hayles assessed the impact of the Macy Conferences on the developments of Artificial Intelligence. Here I will proceed to explain Hayles’ recounting of how cybernetics began to adopt more reflexive models of cognition. I will look at what she has to individually say about the second and thirds waves of cybernetics and conclude with a discussion on Hayles’ claim...

Nancy Katherine Hayles, more than anyone, has contributed the most to our understanding of what it means to be posthuman. Her work How We Became Posthuman is an extensive interdisciplinary chronicle of science, technology and literature, explaining how posthumanism emerged. In this lecture I will explain Hayles overall project in How We Became Posthuman. More specifically, I will concentrate on ho...

In this lecture my aim is to provide a synoptic account of how Donna Haraway moves from cyborg thinking towards what she calls companion thinking. Firstly, I will outline how Haraway tackles the question of the construction of knowledge with special attention to her essay ‘’Situated Knowledges.’’ This will in turn enable me to explain how Haraway develops a theory of biopolitics which sets the sta...

In this lecture I will first outline the central themes Donna Haraway introduces in ‘A Cyborg Manifesto.’ Secondly, I explain what Haraway means by cyborg feminism. Towards the end of the lecture, I will turn to explain Haraway’s account of boundary blurring which is essential for understanding the ethical and political imperatives of the cyborg. These lectures are brought to you by Staffordshire...

In this lecture, I will begin by recounting some of Haraway’s background and intellectual context which I think is very instructive for helping us understand Haraway’s theories. I will then proceed to explain the origin of her own philosophical method, especially as it merges in her challenge to what she deems to be thinly ‘objectivist’ accounts of scientific knowledge. From there, I will then exp...

In this lecture I will how Lyotard's The Inhuman offers a reconceptualization of technology as a type of inscription . By ‘inscription’ Lyotard is referring to development’s information and communications. The expansion of communications has specific consequences for how we experience time, space and cognitive perception. I will conclude with a discussion of Lyotard’s famous essay ‘Can thought go...

In this lecture, I will provide you with some background context to Jean-Francois Lyotard’s philosophy, as well as look at what is meant by postmodernism, and more specifically, I will explain Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition. This latter much misunderstood text is crucial for understanding the theoretical features of the posthuman condition. These lectures are brought to you by Staffordshire Un...

Lectures from Staffordshire University's Philosophy team from our module Posthumanism and Technology. In this lecture, I begin our course on philosophical posthumanism. I compare and contrast two very different philosophers on the question concerning technology: Martin Heidegger and Rosi Braidotti Come study on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link . Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Natur...