Re: <eyebeam><blast> posthuman

[Stephen123@aol.com]

Kate Hayles wrote:
>The posthuman is best understood, in my view, not
>as an antihuman annihilation of human life as we know it, but rather as

>the newest phase of a process that has been on-going for thousands of
>years of cognitively enriched environments.  Edwin Hutchins points to
>this process when he asks why modern humans are capable of more
>sophisticated cognitiion than cavemen.  We can achieve this, he
>suggests, not because we are smarter, but because we have built smarter

>environments in which to function.

This seems to presume a linear progression of incresing
sophistication...'progress'.  Certainly 15,000 years ago some very
complex cognition was going on.  Artistic styles existed 30,000 to
10,000 years ago in Europe which persisted over thousands of miles and
*thousands of years*.  I read an article recently that asserted the use
of woven cloth and buttons was temporarily lost in Europe only about
10,000 years ago due to environmental catastrophe.  I use a traditional
bowstring knot to prevent kevlar picture cord from slipping on the back
of picture frames.  I'm now looking into the question of whether this
knot predates the 10,000 year collapse in Europe.

Perhaps we are not smarter than our ancestors and neither are our
environments.  Certainly we are different, but in a historical,
circumstantial, contextual way.  The technological explosion predisposes
us to see ourselves as the pinnacle of some grand progression.  It's a
pleasant idea.  But it's not right.  We are an historical circumstance.

- Stephen Linhart



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