Katherine Hayles on posthuman life: computing media are our inextricable symbionts
danfaggella · x · 2026-10-09
A podcast conversation with Katherine Hayles, author of the influential 1999 book "How We Became Posthuman," on how her thinking has evolved. She argues computational media are our inextricable symbionts — if all computing media were destroyed tonight, 90% of humanity would die within six months. She doesn't think AI itself is "alive," but believes our lives are already inseparable from computational systems. Her hopeful direction is intelligence augmentation: synthetic minds that extend human cognition.
Related event: Posthuman Scholar Hayles: Computing Media Now a Human Symbiont(2 posts)→
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