AS one of the most consistently interesting commentators on new technology it
is no surprise to see Katherine Hayles among the contributors to The Digital
Dialectic, edited by Peter Lunenfield ( MIT Press, 拢24.50, ISBN
0262122138), one of the latest offerings in what is fast becoming a flood of
techno-cultural anthologies.
Every major US academic press has been churning out such texts, and although
this is not the best I have read, a number of the entries make this volume well
worth the price. Aside from Hayles, a literary theorist at UCLA who also holds
an advanced degree in chemistry and reprises some ideas from her
Posthumans, here are many of the usual suspects: California cyber-guru
Michael Heim, MIT鈥檚 cyber-architectural theorist William Mitchell, and new-media
artists Carol Gigliotti and Brenda Laurel. Particularly fine essays are also
contributed by Erkki Huhtamo, who gives a quirky historical analysis of shifting
attitudes towards automated machines and computers; and the always insightful
Lev Manovich, who discusses the possibilities of 鈥渄igital cinema鈥�.