| Works exploring the nature of human identity in relationship to technological change tend to either celebrate the interpenetration of the mind and machine (Haraway's "Manifesto for Cyborgs," etc.) or to codify the biological body as the necessary substrate of identity (Hayles' How We Became Post-Human, etc.). Rather than consider that our interactions with technology have made us post-human, in Conversations with Ghosts and Machines, I examine science fiction literature and film to show how four historically specific moments of encounter between the human and technology---the mechanical systemization of the workforce, the introduction of computing, the development of robotics, and the promise of the virtual---each place nostalgic definitions of the human in crisis and precipitate serial renegotiations of what constitutes human identity. Through our "conversations," our social interactions, with entities both similar and dissimilar to ourselves, the ghosts and machines that inhabit our world, we actively participate in the restructuring of what it means to be human, reshaping the category to include both new understandings of ourselves and our technology-mediated world. |
