Metal and Flesh: The Evolution of Man: Technology Takes Over (Leonardo Books)

Dyens, Ollivier

ISBN 10: 0262042002 / ISBN 13: 9780262042000

Published by Mit Pr, 2001

About this Item

Used - Very Good.

Seller Inventory # 13-C-5-0161

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Metal and Flesh: The Evolution of Man: Technology Takes Over (Leonardo Books)
• Publisher: Mit Pr
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262042002
• ISBN 13: 9780262042000
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

About this title

Synopsis

For more than 3,000 years, humans have explored uncharted geographic and spiritual realms. Present-day explorers face new territories born from the coupling of living tissue and metal, strange lifeforms that are intelligent but unconscious, neither completely alive nor dead. Our bodies are now made of machines, images, and information. We are becoming cultural bodies in a world inhabited by cyborgs, clones, genetically modified animals, and innumerable species of human/information symbionts.Ollivier Dyens's Metal and Flesh is about two closely related phenomena: the technologically induced transformation of our perceptions of the world and the emergence of a cultural biology. Culture, according to Dyens, is taking control of the biosphere. Focusing on the twentieth century--which will be remembered as the century in which the living body was blurred, molded, and transformed by technology and culture--Dyens ruminates on the undeniable and irreversible human/machine entanglement that is changing the very nature of our lives.

Review

"Are we not men," bark the creatures residing in H.G. Wells's fantasy island, and cultural critic Ollivier Dyens looks into the issue in his book Metal and Flesh. Arguing that culture has redefined and even supplanted biology, he wants us to see and perhaps guide the changes we're wreaking on our bodies and the world.

Incorporating literary analysis and deft sociological synopsis, Dyens shows the reader how we have embraced technology so thoroughly that we are practically helpless without it. But ultimately, he says, our nature is still cultural, and he is surprisingly optimistic (if wary) about our lives, even if he's informed by the cyberpunk canon, Kafka, and 1984. As he says near the book's close: "We are not becoming cyborgs but sketches, pictures, writings, songs, and dances. Within us, all phenomena intermingle." Postmodern or Zen--Dyens leaves the reader with a warm, but restless, inner glow. --Rob Lightner