CURRENTLY READING: HUMAN ERROR
‘Where is the human indeed? Is it something that flares up during moments of compassion, only to disappear when self-interests are compromised? Is it an ontological property found nested within condominiums, or slums, or space stations, or caves? Or is it an unstable element that needs precise criteria and conditions to emerge? Does it in fact cut across current taxonomic species lines, as happens when we seem to communicate with dogs, horses, or elephants? Are we, as the philosophers might ask, merely simulating these conditions of emergence in a controlled experiment? Moreover, is that which we call “the human” really confined to the invisible souls of Homo sapiens? Is it projected onto the historical development of these souls, as relentlessly figured in speech, text, and (moving) image? And finally, if humans are the tool users par excellence, then has not our quintessential property been outsourced to objects (as Bruno Latour suggests)?’ (p. 42).