This book explores the theories of transhumanism and posthumanism, two philosophies that deal with radically changing bodies, minds, and even the nature of humanity itself.

How do digital media technologies affect society and our lives? Through the cultural theory hypotheses of hyper-modernism, hyperreality, and posthumanism, Alan N. Shapiro investigates the social impact of Virtual/Augmented Reality, AI, social media platforms, robots, and the Brain-Computer Interface. His examination of concepts of Jean Baudrillard and Katherine Hayles, as well as films such as Blade Runner 2049, Ghost in the Shell, Ex Machina, and the TV series Black Mirror, suggests that the boundary between science fiction narratives and the »real world« has become indistinct. Science-fictional thinking should be advanced as a principal mode of knowledge for grasping the world and digitalization.

Digital Culture & Society is a refereed, international journal, fostering discussion about the ways in which digital technologies, platforms and applications reconfigure daily lives and practices. It offers a forum for critical analysis and inquiries into digital media theory and provides a publication environment for interdisciplinary research approaches, contemporary theory developments and methodological innovation. The second issue »Quantified Selves | Statistical Bodies« provides methodological and theoretical reflections on technologically generated knowledge about the body and socio-cultural practices that are subsumed, discussed, and criticized using the key concept »Quantified Self«.

Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism is a major reference work on the paradigm emerging from the challenges to humanism, humanity, and the human posed by the erosion of the traditional demarcations between the human and nonhuman. This handbook surveys and speculates on the ways in which the posthumanist paradigm emerged, transformed, and might further develop across the humanities. With its focus on the posthuman as a figure, on posthumanism as a social discourse, and on posthumanisation as an on-going historical and ontological process, the volume highlights the relationship between the humanities and sciences. The essays engage with posthumanism in connection with subfields like the environmental humanities, health humanities, animal studies, and disability studies. The book also traces the historical representations and understanding of posthumanism across time. Additionally, the contributions address genre and forms such as autobiography, games, art, film, museums, and topics such as climate change, speciesism, anthropocentrism, and biopolitics to name a few. This handbook considers posthumanism’s impact across disciplines and areas of study.

The time has come for human cultures to seriously think, to severely conceptualize, and to earnestly fabulate about all the nonhuman critters we share our world with, and to consider how to strive for more ethical cohabitation. Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture tackles this severe matter within the framework of literary and cultural studies. The emphasis of the inquiry is on the various ways actual and fictional nonhumans are reconfigured in contemporary culture – although, as long as the domain of nonhumanity is carved in the negative space of humanity, addressing these issues will inevitably clamor for the reconfiguration of the human as well. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/reconfiguring-human-nonhuman-posthuman-literature-culture-sanna-karkulehto-aino-kaisa-koistinen-essi-varis/e/10.4324/9780429243042, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Posthumanism and the Massive Open Online Course critiques the problematic reliance on humanism that pervades online education and the MOOC, and explores theoretical frameworks that look beyond these limitations. While MOOCs (massive open online courses) have attracted significant academic and media attention, critical analyses of their development have been rare. Following an overview of MOOCs and their corporate means of promotion, this book unravels the tendencies in research and theory that continue to adopt normative views of user access, participation, and educational space in order to offer alternatives to the dominant understandings of community and authenticity in education.

Transhumanism and Posthumanism in Twenty-First Century Narrative brings together fifteen scholars from five different countries to explore the different ways in which the posthuman has been addressed in contemporary culture and more specifically in key narratives, written in the second decade of the 21st century, by Dave Eggers, William Gibson, John Shirley, Tom McCarthy, Jeff Vandermeer, Don DeLillo, Margaret Atwood, Cixin Liu and Helen Marshall. Some of these works engage in the premises and perils of transhumanism, while others explore the qualities of the (post)human in a variety of dystopian futures marked by the planetary influence of human action. From a critical posthumanist perspective that questions anthropocentrism, human exceptionalism and the centrality of the ‘human’ subject in the era of the Anthropocene, the scholars in this collection analyse the aesthetic choices these authors make to depict the posthuman and its aftereffects.

As our ideas of the human have come under increasing challenges – from technological change, from medical advances, from the existential threat of climate crisis, from an ideological decentering of the human, amongst many other things – the 'posthuman' has become an increasingly central topic in the Humanities. Bringing together leading scholars from across the world and a wide range of disciplines, this is the most comprehensive available survey of cutting edge contemporary scholarship on posthumanism in literature, culture and theory. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Posthumanism explores: - Central critical concepts and approaches, including transhumanism, new materialism and the Anthropocene - Ethical perspectives on ecology, race, gender and disability - Technology, from data and artificial intelligence to medicine and genetics - A wide range of genres and forms, from literary and science fiction, through film, television and music, to comics, video games and social media.

In this unprecedented study, leading scholars and emerging voices from around the world consider how race and ethnicity continue to shape our everyday lives, even as digital technology seems to promise a release from our "real" social identities. How do people use the new expressive features of digital technologies to experience, represent, discuss, and debate racial and ethnic identity? How have digital technologies or digital spaces become racialized? How have the existing vernacular traditions, or folklore, surrounding identity been reshaped in digital spaces? And how have new traditions emerged? This interdisciplinary volume of essays explores the role of traditional culture in the evolving expressions, practices, and images of race and ethnicity in the digital age. The work examines cultural forms in exclusively digital environments as well as in the hybrid environments created by mobile technologies, where real life becomes overlaid with digital content. Insights from academics across disciplines—including anthropology, communications, folkloristics, art, and sociology—consider the interplay between race/ethnicity, everyday vernacular culture, and digital technologies. Six sections explore traditional cultural affordances of technology, folklore and digital applications, visual cultures of race and ethnicity, racism and exclusion online, political activism and race, and concluding observations. The book covers technologies such as vlogs, video games, digital photography, messaging applications, social media sites, and the Internet.

"This is an outstanding book. It is one of only a few scholarly texts that successfully combine a nuanced theoretical understanding of the digital age with empirical case studies of contemporary media culture. The scope is impressive, ranging from questions of digital inequality to emergent forms of cyberpolitics." - Nick Gane, York University "Well written, very up-to-date with a good balance of examples and theory. It′s good to have all the major issues covered in one book." - Peter Millard, Portsmouth University "This is just the text I was looking for to enable first year undergraduates to develop their critical understanding of the technologies they have embedded so completely in their lives." - Chris Simpson, University College of St Mark & St John This is more than just another book on Internet studies. Tracing the pervasive influence of ′digital culture′ throughout contemporary life, this text integrates socio-economic understandings of the ′information society′ with the cultural studies approach to production, use, and consumption of digital media and multimedia. Refreshingly readable and packed with examples from profiling databases and mashups to cybersex and the truth about social networking, Understanding Digital Culture: Crosses disciplines to give a balanced account of the social, economic and cultural dimensions of the information society. Illuminates the increasing importance of mobile, wireless and converged media technologies in everyday life. Unpacks how the information society is transforming and challenging traditional notions of crime, resistance, war and protest, community, intimacy and belonging. Charts the changing cultural forms associated with new media and its consumption, including music, gaming, microblogging and online identity. Illustrates the above through a series of contemporary, in-depth case studies of digital culture. This is the perfect text for students looking for a full account of the information society, virtual cultures, sociology of the Internet and new media.