Katherine Hayles will be visiting campus on March 22-23rd

Thursday, March 22nd
3:30 pm
IMU Dogwood Room

Sponsored by the Center for Theory in the Humanities, media@iu, and the Sawyer Seminar on Science Studies.

"The Technogenetic Spiral: Implications and Interventions."

Abstract:
Technogenesis is the idea that humans and technics are co-evolving together, both historically and in the contemporary period. While genetic adaptation was involved in previous eras, in the contemporary period the primary mechanisms of adaptation run between technologically engineered environments and human cognitive systems, including consciousness, subconsciousness, and the (adaptive or cognitive) unconscious. The adaptive presssures toward increased information density and more (and more flexible) information streams (among other factors) are re-configuring human cognition on multiple levels, including neurophysiological. This talk will explore the implications of these adaptations and discuss works of digital literature that attempt to intervene constructively in the present situation.

Bio:
Hayles is professor of English at Duke University and is the author of numerous books, including How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics (1999), for which she won the Rene Wellek Prize. Her most recent publications are: Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary (2008), a primer of electronic literature; My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts (2005); Nanoculture: Implications of the New Technoscience (ed.) (2004). Hayles has won numerous prestigious awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Residential Fellowship, and two Presidential Research Fellowships from the University of California.