Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with Our Nonhuman Symbionts

Hayles (English, Univ. of California, Los Angeles; Postprint) begins her book with the scientific jargon of her field. That may make this title a challenging read for some readers, but it could also be part of the author’s point. She suggests a need to disrupt what she calls an “integrated cognitive framework” that has guided deep intellectual work since the Renaissance. She wants people to reconsider their views about nonhuman intelligence. To explain, her book provides a heavily footnoted set of data points and concepts from 21st-century scholarship across various disciplines. Readers will quickly discover that Hayles’s words are carefully and critically chosen, as is her distinction between agents and actors. For many readers, it may require slow reading and significant analysis to fully understand what it means to reorient oneself away from a human-centered view of the world.