“Thinking of oneself as an aging computer / Thinking of (an aging) oneself as a computer” presented by Pryor
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Posthumanism I
Presentation Title:
- Thinking of oneself as an aging computer / Thinking of (an aging) oneself as a computer
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Abstract:
Abstract
At the second ISEA in 1990 I gave a paper that went on to be widely published (Pryor 1991: 585). Entitled ‘Thinking Of Oneself as a Computer‘, the paper pointed out that people were starting to talk about themselves as if they were computers; the computer seemed to be becoming a new metaphor for the self.
Today this observation is hardly new; in fact, it is commonplace to hear references to, for example, ‘hardwired’ brains and ‘programmed’ cells, as if the metaphor has been thoroughly and unquestioningly assimilated. There is at least one PhD involved in analyzing the contemporary manifestations of this idea (should I say this ‘meme’?). However, that is not my intention here. Instead I want to very briefly update my own analysis by subjectively examining it in the light of an activity that dare not speak its name, that is, of aging.
