Article ID: CBB001253050

Our Posthuman Past: Victorian Realism, Cybernetics, and the Problem of Information (2013)

unapi

This essay argues that Victorian realism pre-imagines the conditions of early artificial intelligence by reading Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford (1853) alongside key cybernetic texts. In doing so, it claims that Victorian realism influences twentieth-century definitions of what it means to be human---definitions that have sparked contemporary debate about information and embodiment. By examining realism's representation practices, information practices can be better understood, not just in the twenty-first century, but as part of an ongoing debate.

...More

Description On an 1853 work by Elizabeth Gaskell.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001253050/

Similar Citations

Chapter Graham Matthews; (2020)
‘A Push-Button Type of Thinking’: Automation, Cybernetics, and AI in Midcentury British Literature

Thesis Coriale, Danielle; (2009)
The Naturalist Imagination: Novel Forms of British Natural History, 1830--1890

Thesis Menke, Richard Bruce; (2000)
Victorian interiors: The embodiment of subjectivity in English fiction, 1836--1901

Chapter Mitcham, Carl; (2023)
What Is Living and What Is Dead in Classic European Philosophy of Technology?

Thesis Bankard, Jennifer Sopchockchai; (2013)
Testing Reality's Limits: “Mad” Scientists, Realism, and the Supernatural in Late Victorian Popular Fiction

Article Helen Small; (2020)
Artificial Intelligence: George Eliot, Ernst Kapp, and the Projections of Character

Article Emily Thomas; (2015)
British Idealist Monadologies and the Reality of Time: Hilda Oakeley Against McTaggart, Leibniz, and Others

Article Rudolf Seising; (2023)
KI – Kapriolende Intelligenz – Kapriolende Information (AI - Capricious Intelligence - Capricious Information)

Article Boden, Margaret; (2006-2007)
Grey Walter's Anticipatory Tortoises

Article Helen Piel; Rudolf Seising; Christian Götter; (2022)
The Computer Metaphor. Anchoring the Fear of Human Obsolescence(s) since the 20th Century

Article Lente, Dick van; (2022)
Robots And Healthcare: The Deep Roots of a Technological Fix

Book Cordeschi, Roberto; (2002)
The Discovery of the Artificial Behavior, Mind and Machines before and beyond Cybernetics

Book Ronan Le Roux; (2018)
Une histoire de la cybernétique en France: 1948-1975; (A history of cybernetics in France: 1948-1975)

Article Dredge, Sarah; (2012)
Negotiating “A Woman's Work”: Philanthropy to Social Science in Gaskell's North and South

Book DeWitt, Anne; (2013)
Moral Authority, Men of Science, and the Victorian Novel

Article A. J. Larner; (2015)
Headache in the Writings of Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865)

Thesis Gerstel, Jennifer Elisabeth; (2002)
Sexual Selection and Mate Choice in Darwin, Eliot, Gaskell, and Hardy

Thesis Quamen, Harvey Noel; (2001)
Becoming artificial: H. G. Wells and the scientific discourses of modernism

Article Kline, Ronald R.; (2011)
Cybernetics, Automata Studies, and the Dartmouth Conference on Artificial Intelligence

Chapter Asaro, Peter M.; (2008)
From Mechanisms of Adaptation to Intelligence Amplifiers: The Philosophy of W. Ross Ashby

Authors & Contributors
Seising, Rudolf
Asaro, Peter M.
Bankard, Jennifer Sopchockchai
Boden, Margaret A.
Cordeschi, Roberto
Coriale, Danielle
Journals
19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
Acta Historica Leopoldina
British Journal for the History of Philosophy
Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
Journal of Medical Biography
Publishers
Oxford University Press
Pennsylvania State University
Stanford University
University of Toronto
Brandeis University
Cambridge University Press
Concepts
Artificial intelligence
Cybernetics
Science and literature
Philosophy
Technology and society
Cognitive science
People
Gaskell, Elizabeth
Eliot, George
Ashby, W. Ross
Wells, Herbert George
Clarke, Arthur C.
Craik, Kenneth James William
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, late
20th century, early
21st century
Modern
Places
Great Britain
France
London (England)
England
Institutions
Dartmouth University
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment