In chapter four of Hayles’ Electronic Literature, Revealing and Transforming, Hayles discusses the phenomena that take place during human interactions with intelligent machines. She states that as literature is further integrated into computational mediums it further impacts the way in which these programs develop and visa versa. As these processes begin to take place, humans begin to incorporate specific techniques and acquire particular methods in dealing with the symbiotic relationships we’ve developed with machines: “Evolving in active interplay with intelligent machines, the ‘human’ neither encloses the technological nor is enclosed by it. Rather, human agency operates within complex systems in which nonhuman actors play important roles.” The cultural effects in dealing with computers aren’t only evident in our ability to passively interact with them after becoming desensitized to their bugs, but also in how we currently interact with other human beings–nowadays human interaction has changed in a variety of ways due to our constant communication via technology. Both human beings and machines have begun building off of each other while simultaneously looping into one another. Or as Hayles puts it in pg. 138: “My body knows things my mind has forgotten or never realized; my mind knows things that my body has not (yet) incorporated.”
In a world where we are constantly giving ourselves to our intelligent machines and where our intelligent machines are more and more becoming extensions of our mind, will we ever reach a point where the symbiosis has reached its fullest potential and if so, where and when will that point be? Will we keep coming up with new technology to “have our minds be less in our minds” until we realize that our minds were never an intrinsic part of us at all, but instead a small blip in the radar that is the network of existence?
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