Hayles (the Queen Honey Bees Knees) & Turner

               I think that Hayles is a genius. She is the BEES KNEES! Everything she wrote I loved. I love the metaphor of the anorexic individual who is of the mind as so disconnected from the body that he simply sees the body as an object in need of controlling. The self then, only resides in the brain. This brings me to another point she brought up in relation to the posthuman (an undistinguishable self-will from other-will). This let Hayles to state that she sometimes refers to “sleep agent” wanting to rest, while her food agent says it should go to the store (Hayles, 6). This caught my attention because of a number of fights that have occurred between my boyfriend and I. I suppose Hayles might say that it is the result of a human and posthuman intermingling (although from my perspective it is the result of someone who operates more easily from consciousness, while the other is governed by emotions). Essentially, I often try and regulate my emotions and consciously say out loud something like, “I’m being governed by my anger systems right now” or “calm down, you’re making my brain release cortisol.” For some reason, this only leads to anger. I imagine another posthuman might appreciate it, haha.

            In reference to Hayles third stage virtuality, I thoroughly enjoyed the example of “virtual ping-pong” (Hayles, 14). This immediately made me think of playing wii. Essentially, the games take place partially in the real world because we move our bodies in the same fashion; however, it also visually takes place in the virtual world. In my neuropsychology class we have read articles in relation to the fact that the same brain regions are activated when a human watches another human perform a behavior (i.e. literally watching someone perform a yoga pose in hopes of repeating it), as when they actually perform the behavior. This makes me wonder if individuals who are better at this, make better video game players.

            In this virtual world that the posthuman has created, Turner suggests that the virtual network has no epicenter like an atom does, rather it is a random network of information (Turner, 202). This entropy is evident to me, considering the fits of ADHD I’ve experienced while writing this blog. I was beginning to read Ch. 7 because it is about Wired magazine, which I love, but then I was like wait, I need to write this blog. Obviously my next step was to get back on Wired.com, on to the gamer section, where I found a game, then off to the site, then off to Amazon.com to see if they have it for mac, the to facebook, then to pictures of myself, pretend to be interested in someone else, then back to me me me. Haha…I’m tempted to fade away into oblivion now… We all get the point right? Virtual networks are ever expanding; they are born from what births them, and then become that which birthed it (Hayles, 8). I’m my own grandpa?