Hayles’ article begins with a discussion of a conference in Dubai where participants are connected to the network while taking notes on their devices while maintaining the feeling or belief that they are autonomous beings apart from everyone and everything around them. She points out that, in fact, no one and no thing in that setting are autonomous, but are part of an assemblage of “human and technical actors, as well as energy flows and other material goods” which work so smoothly together that no one actor has to consider the dependence each part of the assemblage has on its other parts. In short, the assemblage works so well that we forget it is there, allowing us to maintain the illusion of autonomy.

Hayles moves the discussion towards cognitive assemblages, one that is focused on the circulation of information, interpretations, data, and meaning. She considers, briefly, different types of cognizers, acknowledging that humans are the dominant cognizers, but that we often give ourselves too much credit. Specifically, she argues that while we may think of technological tools as tools or mediums for our own cognitive activities, many think of computing technologies as superior cognizers. At the very least, for Hayles, we should consider computers our symbionts and collaborators. The purpose of Hayles’ article is to explore questions that arise when computers and humans are considered symbionts in cognitive assemblages. Hayles asks questions and hazards answers concerning the relationship between human and computer, text and code, authorship and ownership for the rest of the essay.

Hayles uses several examples from electronic literature in her discussion, particularly Montfort’s “Taroko Gorge” and Montfort and Strickland’s “Sea and Spar Between.” In these examples, generative poetry uses slot algorithms (Taroko Gorge) and other code to produce texts that resemble traditional literary texts, raising the question of who or what has influence and authority over a text and its production. The code in “Sea and Spar Between” enable the reader to experience being lost at sea in a vast corpus of texts from Dickens and Melville, while also providing commentary and an essay with the work from the authors themselves. This work highlights questions and issues of the layers of textual meaning in contemporary texts, most or many of which rely on code to exist and circulate. Importantly, Hayles’ notes that these and other works cannot be said to be the work of any autonomous actor: the authors and the computing technology work in concert to produce something that could not exist without the cooperation of the other.

Next, Hayles explores when computers may exceed being collaborators or symbionts, which usually puts humans in the position of having the upper hand, and discusses instances in which computers are at least co-authors—instances in which computers exceed the abilities, cognitively, of their human counterparts. She discusses “Evolution,” “Go,” and other games where computers outperform humans consistently. It seems to me that she does this to try and demonstrate to her reader that humans should see themselves and our technologies as parts of cognitive assemblages that influence our lives, informationally and materially. 

At the end of the article, she makes her argument that a posthuman future is upon us, but that humans must take on the responsibility of protecting all sorts of cognition and all cognizers. Understanding our relationship as part of an assemblage rather than separate and autonomous is a first step to protecting other cognizers. I like this argument and agree with it. Like I wrote in my analysis of Anipoemas y Tipoemas, Hayles is hitting on how humans view themselves as separate from and better than everything else. Hayles and Uribe both argue, though in different ways, that humans, our signs, letters, and words, are a part of nature, not apart from it. Seeing ourselves in this way will help us to appreciate our connection to everything else, thereby encouraging responsible behaviors as we continue forward.