Hayles discusses the core tendency within cybernetics to define a framework for understanding humans and machines in similar terms. This produces an inherent tension, between the tendency towards simplification and quantification versus more complex views that resist easy quantification but may offer more holistic understandings. This is comparable to the two worldviews discussed by Penny, of which Hayles clearly advocates for the holistic, embodied approach. Hayes also discusses several theories that seem to redefine environmentally situated and embodied cognition back into computational terms. For example, Fredkin's theories of interpretation that allow for a holistic, multilayered view of cognition (where subcognitive and 'noncognitive' processes are also acts of interpretation and meaning) but simultaneously posit that the universe is a giant computer. We discussed the way this conception of the universe relates to the pop-science/pop-philosophy idea that we (intelligent/conscious life) are the universe looking back at itself. For Hayles, Fredkin's ideas successfully push the boundaries of computational frameworks away from limiting perspectives, but do they go far enough?
Does creating a framework that can encompass both humans and machines necessitate that we see ourselves in computational terms? What does a truly holistic shared language or framework look like?
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