DOMINIC W. MASSARO, editor
University of California, Santa Cruz

Prosthetics: A User Guide for Posthumans

The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future
Edited by Marquard Smith and Joanne Morra. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. vii + 340 pp. Cloth, $34.95.

The book's cover informs us that a prosthesis points "to an addition, replacement, extension, enhancement," that it "has become something of an all purpose metaphor for the interactions of body and technology," being "concerned with cybernetics, transplant technology, artificial intelligence and virtual reality." All this leads one to drool at the prospect of opening the book to discover a technological treasure trove of cyborgs, implants, and upgraded humans with mind-blowing abilities such as multidimensional thought at times bordering on the unreal. Indeed, what will the authors make of reality—does it exist at all?