My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary TextsWe live in a world, according to N. Katherine Hayles, where new languages are constantly emerging, proliferating, and fading into obsolescence. These are languages of our own making: the programming languages written in code for the intelligent machines we call computers. Hayles's latest exploration provides an exciting new way of understanding the relations between code and language and considers how their interactions have affected creative, technological, and artistic practices. My Mother Was a Computer explores how the impact of code on everyday life has become comparable to that of speech and writing: language and code have grown more entangled, the lines that once separated humans from machines, analog from digital, and old technologies from new ones have become blurred. My Mother Was a Computer gives us the tools necessary to make sense of these complex relationships. Hayles argues that we live in an age of intermediation that challenges our ideas about language, subjectivity, literary objects, and textuality. This process of intermediation takes place where digital media interact with cultural practices associated with older media, and here Hayles sharply portrays such interactions: how code differs from speech; how electronic text differs from print; the effects of digital media on the idea of the self; the effects of digitality on printed books; our conceptions of computers as living beings; the possibility that human consciousness itself might be computational; and the subjective cosmology wherein humans see the universe through the lens of their own digital age. We are the children of computers in more than one sense, and no critic has done more than N. Katherine Hayles to explain how these technologies define us and our culture. Heady and provocative, My Mother Was a Computer will be judged as her best work yet. |
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Digital Subjects and Literary Texts N. Katherine Hayles. ATC C ATC CC TTC My Mother Was a Computer DIGITAL SUBJECTS AND LITERARY TEXTS N. Katherine Hayles CA ATA CT A AC TTT ATC TCC CCT CC C CGT A AA C ACT A ACC CC CCT AC CACCO ATTOA C C ...
Digital Subjects and Literary Texts N. Katherine Hayles. ATC C ATC CC TTC My Mother Was a Computer DIGITAL SUBJECTS AND LITERARY TEXTS N. Katherine Hayles CA ATA CT A AC TTT ATC TCC CCT CC C CGT A AA C ACT A ACC CC CCT AC CACCO ATTOA C C ...
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... computer : digital subjects and literary texts / N. Katherine Hayles . p . cm . Includes bibliographical references ... computer interaction . 3. Computers in literature . 4. Virtual reality . 5. American literature— 20th century ...
... computer : digital subjects and literary texts / N. Katherine Hayles . p . cm . Includes bibliographical references ... computer interaction . 3. Computers in literature . 4. Virtual reality . 5. American literature— 20th century ...
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Digital Subjects and Literary Texts N. Katherine Hayles. To my mother , who was not a computer Contents Acknowledgments Prologue : Computing Kin PART 1. Making : Prologue: Computing Kin.
Digital Subjects and Literary Texts N. Katherine Hayles. To my mother , who was not a computer Contents Acknowledgments Prologue : Computing Kin PART 1. Making : Prologue: Computing Kin.
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Digital Subjects and Literary Texts N. Katherine Hayles. Contents Acknowledgments Prologue : Computing Kin PART 1. Making : Language and Code 1 Intermediation : Textuality and the Regime of Computation ix 1 2 Speech , Writing , Code ...
Digital Subjects and Literary Texts N. Katherine Hayles. Contents Acknowledgments Prologue : Computing Kin PART 1. Making : Language and Code 1 Intermediation : Textuality and the Regime of Computation ix 1 2 Speech , Writing , Code ...
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Digital Subjects and Literary Texts N. Katherine Hayles. Residence at Bellagio ; and research funds provided by the John Charles Hillis Endowed Chair . I am grateful for this generous support . Alan Thomas at the University of Chicago ...
Digital Subjects and Literary Texts N. Katherine Hayles. Residence at Bellagio ; and research funds provided by the John Charles Hillis Endowed Chair . I am grateful for this generous support . Alan Thomas at the University of Chicago ...
Contents
Intermediation Textuality and the Regime of Computation | 9 |
Speech Writing Code Three Worldviews | 33 |
The Dream of Information Escape and Constraint in the Bodies of Three Fictions | 56 |
STORING Print and Etext | 81 |
Translating Media | 83 |
Performative Code and Figurative Language Neal Stephensons Cryptonomicon | 111 |
Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jacksons Patchwork Girl | 137 |
TRANSMITTING Analog and Digital | 163 |
Other editions - View all
My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts N. Katherine Hayles Limited preview - 2010 |
My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts N. Katherine Hayles No preview available - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
agency analog argues Arrhodes become behavior binary body cellular automata chapter Chew-Z cognitive complex Computational Universe consciousness context create Cryptonomicon cultural Derrida digital computer Digital Philosophy digital subjects distributed cognitive dynamics Edward Fredkin Egan Egan's electronic literature electronic text electronic textuality embodied emergence Enoch Root evolve example explore feedback loops female fiction function Greg Egan Guattari human hypertext idea implications instantiated intelligent machines interactions intermediation interpretation Katherine Hayles kind Kittler Lem's lexia linked literature Mary Shelley material McGann meaning mechanism metaphor Michael Kandel mind monster multiple narrative narrator novel object operations Palmer Eldritch Patchwork Girl Permutation City physical posthuman processes quantum Randy reality Regime of Computation robot Saussure Saussure's sense Shelley Shelley Jackson signifier simulation speech and writing Stephen Wolfram Stephenson story Storyspace structure technologies theory tion transformation translation Turing understand virtual creatures Wolfram worldview