technogenesis

I will outline my understanding of how writing through digital media extends the practice of self-translation (an area which has recently attracted attention in translation studies) and writing in general. As an example of technogenesis, writing with and against the intelligent machine opens a wide spectrum of interaction where the human actor both adapts to and resists the influence of the digital media. Writing through this type of translation becomes a self-reflexive practice, in which the translation functions as a mirroring device that prompts the writer to return to the “original” and then again to the “translation.” Ultimately, the outcome is a back-and-forth process in which the binary between original and translation collapses.

(Source: Abstract ICDMT 2016)

"Bodies in Code explores how our bodies experience and adapt to digital environments. Cyberculture theorists have tended to overlook biological reality when talking about virtual reality, and Mark B. N. Hansen's book shows what they've been missing. Cyberspace is anchored in the body, he argues, and it's the body--not high-tech computer graphics--that allows a person to feel like they are really "moving" through virtual reality. Of course these virtual experiences are also profoundly affecting our very understanding of what it means to live as embodied beings. Hansen draws upon recent work in visual culture, cognitive science, and new media studies, as well as examples of computer graphics, websites, and new media art, to show how our bodies are in some ways already becoming virtual."

(Source: Publisher website)

How do we think? N. Katherine Hayles poses this question at the beginning of this bracing exploration of the idea that we think through, with, and alongside media. As the age of print passes and new technologies appear every day, this proposition has become far more complicated, particularly for the traditionally print-based disciplines in the humanities and qualitative social sciences. With a rift growing between digital scholarship and its print-based counterpart, Hayles argues for contemporary technogenesis-the belief that humans and technics are coevolving-and advocates for what she calls comparative media studies, a new approach to locating digital work within print traditions and vice versa. mines the evolution of the field from the traditional humanities and how the digital humanities are changing academic scholarship, research, teaching, and publication. She goes on to depict the neurological consequences of working in digital media, where skimming and scanning, or "hyper reading," and analysis through machine algorithms are forms of reading as valid as close reading once was. Hayles contends that we must recognize all three types of reading and understand the limitations and possibilities of each. In addition to illustrating what a comparative media perspective entails, Hayles explores the technogenesis spiral in its full complexity. She considers the effects of early databases such as telegraph code books and confronts our changing perceptions of time and space in the digital age, illustrating this through three innovative digital productions - Steve Tomasula's electronic novel, "TOC"; Steven Hall's "The Raw Shark Texts"; and Mark Z. Danielewski's "Only Revolutions". Deepening our understanding of the extraordinary transformative powers digital technologies have placed in the hands of humanists, "How We Think" presents a cogent rationale for tackling the challenges facing the humanities today.

(Source: University of Chicago Press blurb)