Cyberculture Cyborgs And Science Fiction

Author : William S. Haney
Publisher : Rodopi
ISBN 13 : 9042019484
Total Pages : 203 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cyberculture, Cyborgs and Science Fiction written by William S. Haney and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2006 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing a key issue related to human nature, this book argues that the first-person experience of pure consciousness may soon be under threat from posthuman biotechnology. In exploiting the mind's capacity for instrumental behavior, posthumanists seek to extend human experience by physically projecting the mind outward through the continuity of thought and the material world, as through telepresence and other forms of prosthetic enhancements. Posthumanism envisions a biology/machine symbiosis that will promote this extension, arguably at the expense of the natural tendency of the mind to move toward pure consciousness. As each chapter of this book contends, by forcibly overextending and thus jeopardizing the neurophysiology of consciousness, the posthuman condition could in the long term undermine human nature, defined as the effortless capacity for transcending the mind's conceptual content. Presented here for the first time, the essential argument of this book is more than a warning; it gives a direction: far better to practice patience and develop pure consciousness and evolve into a higher human being than to fall prey to the Faustian temptations of biotechnological power. As argued throughout the book, each person must choose for him or herself between the technological extension of physical experience through mind, body and world on the one hand, and the natural powers of human consciousness on the other as a means to realize their ultimate vision.

Author : Dani Cavallaro
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 1847140351
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cyberpunk & Cyberculture written by Dani Cavallaro and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2000-04-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cyberpunk and Cyberculture explores the work of a wide range of writers- Acker, Cadigan, Rucker, Shierley, Sterling, Williams and, of course, Gibson - setting their work in the context of science fiction, other literary genres, genre cinema - from Metropolis to Terminator to The Matrix - and contemporary work on the culture of technology.

Author : William S. Haney II
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9401202702
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cyberculture, Cyborgs and Science Fiction written by William S. Haney II and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing a key issue related to human nature, this book argues that the first-person experience of pure consciousness may soon be under threat from posthuman biotechnology. In exploiting the mind’s capacity for instrumental behavior, posthumanists seek to extend human experience by physically projecting the mind outward through the continuity of thought and the material world, as through telepresence and other forms of prosthetic enhancements. Posthumanism envisions a biology/machine symbiosis that will promote this extension, arguably at the expense of the natural tendency of the mind to move toward pure consciousness. As each chapter of this book contends, by forcibly overextending and thus jeopardizing the neurophysiology of consciousness, the posthuman condition could in the long term undermine human nature, defined as the effortless capacity for transcending the mind’s conceptual content. Presented here for the first time, the essential argument of this book is more than a warning; it gives a direction: far better to practice patience and develop pure consciousness and evolve into a higher human being than to fall prey to the Faustian temptations of biotechnological power. As argued throughout the book, each person must choose for him or herself between the technological extension of physical experience through mind, body and world on the one hand, and the natural powers of human consciousness on the other as a means to realize their ultimate vision.

Author : A. Sawyer
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 0230300391
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Teaching Science Fiction written by A. Sawyer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-03-24 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teaching Science Fiction is the first text in thirty years to explore the pedagogic potential of that most intellectually stimulating and provocative form of popular literature: science fiction. Innovative and academically lively, it offers valuable insights into how SF can be taught historically, culturally and practically at university level.

Author : Gary Westfahl
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1440866171
Total Pages : 814 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Science Fiction Literature through History [2 volumes] written by Gary Westfahl and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-07-19 with total page 814 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides students and other interested readers with a comprehensive survey of science fiction history and numerous essays addressing major science fiction topics, authors, works, and subgenres written by a distinguished scholar. This encyclopedia deals with written science fiction in all of its forms, not only novels and short stories but also mediums often ignored in other reference books, such as plays, poems, comic books, and graphic novels. Some science fiction films, television programs, and video games are also mentioned, particularly when they are relevant to written texts. Its focus is on science fiction in the English language, though due attention is given to international authors whose works have been frequently translated into English. Since science fiction became a recognized genre and greatly expanded in the 20th century, works published in the 20th and 21st centuries are most frequently discussed, though important earlier works are not neglected. The texts are designed to be helpful to numerous readers, ranging from students first encountering science fiction to experienced scholars in the field.

Author : Sabine Heuser
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004334378
Total Pages : 299 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Virtual Geographies written by Sabine Heuser and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virtual Geographies is the first detailed study to offer a working definition of cyberpunk within the postmodern force field. Cyberpunk emerges as a new generic cluster within science fiction, one that has spawned many offspring in such domains as film, music, and feminism. Its central features are its adherence to a version of virtual space and a deconstructivist, punk attitude towards (high) culture, modernity, the human body and technology, from computers to prosthetics.The main proponents of cyberpunk are analyzed in depth along with the virtual landscapes they have created - William Gibson’s Cyberspace, Pat Cadigan’s Mindscapes and Neal Stephenson’s Metaverse. Virtual reality is examined closely in all its aspects, from the characteristic narrative constructions employed to the esthetic implications of the ‘virtual sublime’ and its postmodern potential as a discursive mode.With its interdisciplinary approach Virtual Geographies opens up fresh perspectives for scholars interested in the interaction between popular culture and mainstream literature. At the same time, the science fiction fan will be taken beyond the conventional boundaries of the genre into such revitalizing domains as postmodern architecture and literature, and into cutting-edge aspects of science and social thought.

Author : Mark Dery
Publisher : Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN 13 : 0802196500
Total Pages : 552 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Escape Velocity written by Mark Dery and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Without a doubt the best guide I have read to the new computer culture . . . witty and provocative . . . sane and thoughtful” (J. G. Ballard). “A lively compendium of dispatches from the far reaches of today’s computer savvy avant-garde”, Escape Velocity explores the dawn of the Information Age, and the high-tech subcultures that celebrated, critiqued, and gave birth to our wired world and a counterculture digital underground (The New York Times Book Review). Poised between technological rapture and social rupture, Escape Velocity poses the fundamental question of our time: Is technology liberating or enslaving us in the twenty-first century? Mark Dery takes us on an electrifying tour of the high-tech underground. Investigating the shadowy byways of cyberculture, we meet would-be cyborgs who believe the body is obsolete and dream of downloading their minds into computers, cyberhippies who boost their brainpower with smart drugs and mind machines, techno-primitives who sport “biomechanical” tattoos of computer circuitry, and cyberpunk roboticists whose dystopian contraptions duel to the death before howling crowds. “Re-prov[ing] Dery an astute and trustworthy patrolman of the cultural and social borderland between science fiction and non-fiction”, Escape Velocity stands alone as the first truly critical inquiry into cyberculture (Wired). Shifting the focus of our conversation about technology from the corridors of power to disparate voices on the cultural fringes, Dery wires it into the power politics and social issues of the moment. It is essential reading for everyone interested in computer culture and the shape of things to come.

Author : James F McGrath
Publisher : Lutterworth Press
ISBN 13 : 0718840968
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion and Science Fiction written by James F McGrath and published by Lutterworth Press. This book was released on 2012-09-27 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This multidisciplinary book focuses on the intersection between religion and science fiction. Several perspectives are addressed by scholars from different disciplines: theology, literature, history, music, and anthropology. From Frankenstein, by way of Christian apocalyptic, to Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and much more, and from the United States to China and back again, the authors who contribute to this volume serve as guides in the exploration of religion and science fiction as a multifaceted, multidisciplinary, and multicultural phenomenon.

Author : Mary Flanagan
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262561501
Total Pages : 604 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Reload written by Mary Flanagan and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2002-05-03 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthology of feminist cyberfiction and theoretical and critical writings on gender and technoculture. Most writing on cyberculture is dominated by two almost mutually exclusive visions: the heroic image of the male outlaw hacker and the utopian myth of a gender-free cyberworld. Reload offers an alternative picture of cyberspace as a complex and contradictory place where there is oppression as well as liberation. It shows how cyberpunk's revolutionary claims conceal its ultimate conservatism on matters of class, gender, and race. The cyberfeminists writing here view cyberculture as a social experiment with an as-yet-unfulfilled potential to create new identities, relationships, and cultures. The book brings together women's cyberfiction—fiction that explores the relationship between people and virtual technologies—and feminist theoretical and critical investigations of gender and technoculture. From a variety of viewpoints, the writers consider the effects of rapid and profound technological change on culture, in particular both the revolutionary and reactionary effects of cyberculture on women's lives. They also explore the feminist implications of the cyborg, a human-machine hybrid. The writers challenge the conceptual and institutional rifts between high and low culture, which are embedded in the texts and artifacts of cyberculture.

Author : Pelin Kümbet
Publisher : Transnational Press London
ISBN 13 : 1801350043
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Critical Posthumanism: Cloned, Toxic and Cyborg Bodies in Fiction written by Pelin Kümbet and published by Transnational Press London. This book was released on 2020-12-25 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on three representation of posthuman bodies as cloned bodies in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005), toxic bodies in Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People (2007), and cyborg bodies in Justina Robson’s Natural History (2004) from the theoretical perspectives of posthuman definition of what it means to be human, this study discusses the changing concept of the body. In this context, the integral and dynamic connection between a human body and the world is of special significance, which opens up new possibilities to reconfigure the human body that is no longer conceded separate from the nonhuman world but embodied in it. Each of the novels significantly displays the in-betweenness of humans by making them interact with chemical substances, machines, and other nonhuman entities, and shows how clear-cut distinctions between the human and the nonhuman bodies have collapsed.