Computing the Human
Katherine Hayles, University of California at Los Angeles

 When humans construct artefacts, they create environments, change living conditions, and instantiate ideas, all of which change what "the human" means. There is, then, a reverse feedback through which artefacts construct humans. This presentation will explore the construction of the human through computational artefacts ranging from mobile robots to epistemologically autonomous devices. Using the"sense-think-act" paradigm for the construction of artificial intelligences, the presentation will discuss how each of these practices is changing and, in the process, fundamentally transforming how cognition is understood. Researchers discussed include Rodney Brooks, Maja Mataric, Jon Bird, Peter Cariani and Edwin Hutchins.