{"id":80,"date":"2018-10-15T21:40:26","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T21:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/?p=80"},"modified":"2018-10-15T21:40:26","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T21:40:26","slug":"on-cognitive-assemblages-symbiotic-relationships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/on-cognitive-assemblages-symbiotic-relationships\/","title":{"rendered":"On Cognitive Assemblages &#038; Symbiotic Relationships"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Taking a seat amid the twinkling\u00a0blue lights that lined either side of the aisles in Curtin 175, I arrived at the\u00a0<b>October 5<\/b><b><span data-fontsize=\"11\">th<\/span><\/b><b>\u00a0lecture<\/b>\u00a0by\u00a0<b>Dr. N. Katherine Hayles<\/b>\u00a0expecting an encounter with material semiotics and notions of digital bodies. What I experienced was\u00a0even\u00a0more: a riveting discussion of symbiosis, cognitive assemblages and questions of the world to come as compared to the relationships that are.\u00a0<span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Reminding the audience that the idea of cognition is inherently rooted in an anthropocentric view of the world, Hayles challenged notions of what it means to be cognitive. Ultimately arguing that machines are, if we accept Jakob von\u00a0Uexk\u00fcll\u2019s\u00a0definition of\u00a0<i>Umwelt<\/i>\u00a0as the defining pillar of cognition, themselves cognitive, Dr. Hayles highlighted the distinct\u00a0manner in which\u00a0humanity has entered an era of \u201cbio-techno evolution,\u201d criticizing \u201cthe fallacy \u2026 that evolution stop[ped] with biological evolution.\u201d\u00a0<span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>While intriguing in its critical commentary on the human-centric focus of work both in the humanities and social sciences, I was left wondering to what extent this new argument was itself anthropocentric. Is it not somewhat self-centered to claim that\u00a0<i>homo sapiens\u00a0<\/i><i>sapiens<\/i>\u00a0has invented its own next step in evolution: bio-techno evolution? Is the purported end of biological evolution in our species reflected in the data and research originating out of more evolution-focused research domains such as, say, biological anthropology?\u00a0<span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>By no means an affront to Dr. Hayles\u2019\u00a0argument, these questions arise because\u00a0I found her talk precisely the sort of productive\u00a0moment\u00a0I\u2019ve come to expect from C21 events. Uniquely insightful and bold, Dr. Hayles&#8217; question of\u00a0whether or not\u00a0we truly are \u201con a journey to symbiosis with computational media\u201d looms large.\u00a0<span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taking a seat amid the twinkling\u00a0blue lights that lined either side of the aisles in Curtin 175, I arrived at the\u00a0October 5th\u00a0lecture\u00a0by\u00a0Dr. N. Katherine Hayles\u00a0expecting an encounter with material semiotics and notions of digital bodies. What I experienced was\u00a0even\u00a0more: a riveting discussion of symbiosis, cognitive assemblages and questions of the world to come as compared [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-josh-rivers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Hayles-banner.jpg?fit=5184%2C1457&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag9B1-1i","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85,"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions\/85"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}