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A new theory of mind that includes nonhuman and artificial intelligences.
 
The much-lauded superiority of human intelligence has not prevented us from driving the planet into ecological disaster. For N. Katherine Hayles, the climate crisis demands that we rethink basic assumptions about human and nonhuman intelligences. In Bacteria to AI, Hayles develops a new theory of mind—what she calls an integrated cognitive framework (ICF)—that includes the meaning-making practices of lifeforms from bacteria to plants, animals, humans, and some forms of artificial intelligence. Through a sweeping survey of evolutionary biology, computer science, and contemporary literature, Hayles insists that another way of life, with ICF at its core, is not only possible but necessary to safeguard our planet’s future.

An original exploration of the ways cyberspace affects human experience.

New technologies suggest new ideas about embodiment: our "reach" extends to global sites through the Internet; we enter cyberspace through the engines of virtual reality. In this book, a leading philosopher of technology explores the meaning of bodies in technology-how the sense of our bodies and of our orientation in the world is affected by the various information technologies.

Walter Benjamin reimagined through the forgotten power of radio

Philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) has long been recognized for his influence on the fields of literature, film, media studies, critical legal theory, and philosophy. Bringing fresh attention to an often-overlooked aspect of his oeuvre, Bridging Benjamin examines the dozens of radio broadcasts he produced, primarily for children, between 1927 and 1933. Delivered after the academic rejection of his notoriously complex Trauerspiel, these shows became a testing ground for Benjamin’s developing ideas and experimental pedagogy. Though they were cast off as inconsequential by both Benjamin and his contemporaries, Dominic Smith reveals the broadcasts to be a fruitful site for a novel, “derailed” interpretation of Benjamin’s larger body of work.

Reading Benjamin’s radio production as a dynamic site of philosophical experimentation, Smith uses it as a channel and amplifier for three integral but underappreciated aspects of Benjamin’s work: his philosophies of technology, place, and education. Showing how he used broadcast media to explore the increasing “virtualization” of place in networked society, Bridging Benjamin encourages an embrace of Benjamin in contrast to his divisive historical counterparts in the philosophy of technology, such as Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt.

Interpreting Benjamin’s broadcasts as a form of peripatetic thinking—deeply embedded in place, yet mobile and mediated—Bridging Benjamin offers a compelling model for reassessing attachments to the technologies and practices shaping our contemporary worlds.

Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.

Enlightenment-era writers had not yet come to take technology for granted, but nonetheless were—as we are today—both attracted to and repelled by its potential. This volume registers the deep history of such ambivalence, examining technology’s influence on Enlightenment British literature, as well as the impact of literature on conceptions of, attitudes toward, and implementations of technology. Offering a counterbalance to the abundance of studies on literature and science in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain, this volume’s focus encompasses approaches to literary history that help us understand technologies like the steam engine and the telegraph along with representations of technology in literature such as the “political machine.” Contributors ultimately show how literature across genres provided important sites for Enlightenment readers to recognize themselves as “chimeras”—“hybrids of machine and organism”—and to explore the modern self as “a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.”

This book is a thorough documentation of tectonics in the Hong Kong construction industry. It looks at how buildings have been designed and built in a high-density city in a subtropical climate. Written in both Chinese and English, it covers almost all aspects of building materials and technology in Hong Kong with a succinct sequence that follows the construction process of a building project. The case studies in Chapter 3 brings together 16 local projects, which embrace a wide range of building types: from single-storey buildings to high-rise towers, from private development to public institutional construction, from office to residence, and provide invaluable information on the application of building materials and technology.

While it is intended primarily for students in architecture, surveying, and construction, Building Materials and Technology in Hong Kong is an indispensable reference for professionals and practitioners who are dealing with building design and construction. Those with a general interest in building construction will also find this highly illustrated book an interesting and engaging read.