Embodiment : computer networks and symbiosis revisited

In a discussion that investigates understanding of individual and shared realities we consider in this paper suggestions that computer-mediation has a dehumanising, disembodying effect. A tonic blended from Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and Latour and Callon's actor-network theory is prescribed as an antidote for what has been described as the post-human condition. It is suggested that J.C.R. Licklider's notion of human-computer symbiosis from 1960 may be reconsidered to investigate contemporary networked computer communication using the "six step key" from the theory of autopoiesis (Varela, Maturana & Uri be, 1974) to establish whether the Internet may be considered a consensual domain, or an autopoietic unity.