02346cam a22002894a 4500 110808s2012 nyua b 001 0 eng 9780415899161 0415899168 SDU BD418 L439 A 2012 Leaver, Tama. 184402 Artificial culture : identity, technology and bodies / Tama Leaver. New York : Routledge, 2012. 217 p. : ill. Routledge research in cultural and media studies ; 37 HKBU library YT2025 M09 "Artificial Culture" is an examination of the articulation, construction, and representation of "the artificial" in contemporary popular cultural texts, especially science fiction films and novels. The book argues that today we live in an artificial culture due to the deep and inextricable relationship between people, our bodies, and technology at large. While the artificial is often imagined as outside of the natural order and thus also beyond the realm of humanity, paradoxically, artificial concepts are simultaneously produced and constructed by human ideas and labor. The artificial can thus act as a boundary point against which we as a culture can measure what it means to be human. Science fiction feature films and novels, and other related media, frequently and provocatively deploy ideas of the artificial in ways which the lines between people, our bodies, spaces and culture more broadly blur and, at times, dissolve. </P><P>Building on the rich foundational work on the figures of the cyborg and posthuman, this book situates the artificial in similar terms, but from a nevertheless distinctly different viewpoint. After examining ideas of the artificial as deployed in film, novels and other digital contexts, this study concludes that we are now part of an artificial culture entailing a matrix which, rather than separating minds and bodies, or humanity and the digital, reinforces the symbiotic connection between identities, bodies, and technologies.</P>"--Provided by publisher. Artificial life. Artificial intelligence. Virtual reality. Popular culture. Technology Social aspects. Science Social aspects. = C.1 SDU GBE lcc 101562 101562 0 0 lcc 0 BD0418 L439 A2012 0 CGB 280177 SDU SDU GEN3 2025-09-02 2 0 BD418 L439 A 2012 1000362080 2025-09-02 00:00:00 C.1 2025-09-02 GBE