"Human Beings and the Machines of Sunshine" . . . Machines have undeniably extended and amplified our abilities, relieved us of drudgery and danger, and generally enriched the material aspect of our lives. But as the early Satanic textile mills quickly demonstrated, machines can be intrusive, oppressive and even dehumanizing. Over the past hundred years, however, new technologies have emerged that test our notions of what machines are and how we relate to them. Today, as Harraway has observed, our best machines are made of sunshine; they are nothing but signals, electromagnetic waves and slices of the spectrum. Yet by weaving patterns of light, these devices, of which the computer is the most prominent and protean, can erode the boundaries between nature and technology, reality and artifice, mind and body and person and machine. In this talk, I will discuss the emergence of these machines and suggest some of the ways in which they are changing who we are and what we may become.

Biography of G. Anthony Gorry: http://www.jonesgsm.rice.edu/Faculty/TonyGorry/Default.asp