“If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their ...” — N. Katherine Hayles Quote

“If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival.”

“Why should one bother about the ultimate fate of the universe? One answer to this question is similar to the answer to the question about climbing Mount Everest: because the problem exists. It is in the nature of the human mind to seek incessantly new frontiers of knowledge to explore.”

“My religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative evolution. I desire that no public monument or work of art or inscription or sermon or ritual service commemorating me shall suggest that I accepted the tenets peculiar to any established church or denomination nor take the form of a cross or any other instrument of torture or symbol of blood sacrifice.”

“Man! What are you? Who are you? Just a shadow in this universe! You always forget this and the truth will always remind you what you really are! Do you want to be a real thing, not just a shadow? Improve your science ten thousand times; improve your science hundred thousand times! If you can’t improve your science, you will remain as a miserable shadow!”

“Science regards man as an aggregation of atoms temporarily united by a mysterious force called the life-principle. To the materialist, the only difference between a living and a dead body is that in the one case that force is active, in the other latent.”