Gray, Chris Hables 1953-

views updated

GRAY, Chris Hables 1953-

PERSONAL: Born August 23, 1953, in Bishop, CA; son of George (a transportation engineer and manager) and Benita (a mass transit consultant; maiden name, Hables) Gray; married Jane Lovett Wilson (a sociologist), March 3, 1986; children: Corey Alexander Grayson, Zackary Hables Grayson. Ethnicity: "Twenty different ethnicities—Californian, in other words." Education: Stanford University, B.A., 1975; University of California—Santa Cruz, Ph.D., 1991. Politics: "Anti-Authoritarian." Religion: "Biophile." Hobbies and other interests: California, soccer, football, frisbee, basketball, gardening, travel and camping, long walks ("with or without our dogs"), personal rituals, nonviolent direct action, reading, owls, "trying to keep up with the marvelous discoveries of science."

ADDRESSES: Home—606 Fifth Ave., Great Falls, MT 59401. Office—Department of Computer Science, University of Great Falls, 1301 20th St. S, Great Falls, MT 59405. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: South Africa Catalyst Project, research director and traveling organizer, 1979-81; University of California—Santa Cruz, lecturer, 1989-91; Oregon State University, Corvallis, adjunct assistant professor of history, 1992-96; University of Great Falls, Great Falls, MT, associate professor of computer science and cultural studies of science and technology, 1996—, Web master, 1996—. Zetetic Software, Inc., consultant, project developer, and technical writer, 1987-90; Square One Software, Inc., lead writer and consultant, 1991-93; Hewlett-Packard, Corvallis, writer and consultant at Inkjet printer cartridge factory, 1994-95; Argentina Autonomista Project, cofounder, 2002. Goddard College, professor of interdisciplinary studies, 1994—; Masaryk University, guest professor and Eisenhower fellow, 1995; Union Institute and University, faculty member, 2000—; guest speaker at other institutions in the United States and abroad, including Bates College, Brown University, Danish Institute of International Affairs, State University of New York—Buffalo, and Bogazici University. Participant in national and international conferences; guest on numerous media programs; consultant on military technology for the television series White Heat and The Cyborg Commeth, both British Broadcasting Corp. Member of civic action groups; coach for youth soccer teams; Cascade County Guardian Ad Litem Program, board member, 1997-99. Formerly worked as a security guard, mover, painter, legal clerk, woodworker, secretary, child-care aide, gardener, cook, mechanic, saw-mill hand, insulator, and carpenter.

MEMBER: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, American Studies Association, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (chair of Weapons and Peace Working Group, 1999—), Society for the History of Technology, Society for the Social Studies of Science, History of Science Society, Cultural Studies of Science and Technology Research Group.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grants from Silicon Valley Research Group, 1986, and Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, 1987-88; first prize, Esalen Revisioning Philosophy Essay Contest, 1989; fellow, Department of Space History, Smithsonian Institution, 1990, and National Endowment for the Humanities; humanities fellow, Oregon State University, 1992-94; fellowship in aerospace history, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and American Historical Association, 1993-94; research achievement awards, University of Great Falls, 1997, 2002.

WRITINGS:

Power-Learning: Developing Effective Study Skills, Educational Operating Systems (Merced, CA), 1992.

(Contributing editor) The New Columbia Encyclopedia, 5th edition, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1993.

(Editor, with Heidi Figueroa-Sarriera and Steven Mentor) The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge (New York, NY), 1995.

(Editor) Technohistory: Using the History of American Technology in Interdisciplinary Research, Krieger (Malabar, FL), 1996.

Postmodern War: The New Politics of Conflict, Guilford Press (New York, NY), 1997.

Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age, Routledge (New York, NY), 2001.

Also author or editor of several software manuals, guides for computer training programs, and other technical writing. Contributor to books, including Cyborg Worlds: Programming the Military Information Society, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1989; Prosthetic Territories: Politics and Culture, edited by Mark Driscoll and Gabriel Baum, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1995; Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing 1900, Volume 3, edited by D. Schuler, Ablex (New York, NY), 1997; Menfred Clynes: A Festschrift, edited by Martha Mills, 1999; and The Viet Nam War and Postmodernity, edited by Michael Bibby, Burning Cities Press (Tucson, AZ), 2000; author of entries in encyclopedias. General coeditor of "Technologies" book series, Continuum Publishing (New York, NY), 2000—. Author of about a dozen short stories and an unpublished novel. Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Black Rose, Science and Technology Studies, AI and Society: Journal of Human and Machine Intelligence, Nomad: Interdisciplinary Journal of the Humanities, Arts, and Sciences, Science-Fiction Studies, Research in Philosophy and Technology, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Values, and Journal of Men's Studies. Coeditor of special issue, Journal of Urban and Cultural Studies, 1991.

The book Postmodern War: The New Politics of Conflict has been translated into Chinese and Turkish. Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age was translated into German.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Terror and Peace: Information, Globalization, and Power, for Routledge (New York, NY); NASA and the Cyborg: Human-Machine Integration and Space Exploration, Continuum Publishing (New York, NY).

SIDELIGHTS: Chris Hables Gray's books inhabit the space where scientific and cultural writings overlap. As editor of The Cyborg Handbook, he garnered praise for gathering together an unusual and fruitful collection of writings by scientists, cultural critics, and fiction writers on the topic of cyborg technology and its increasing role in both the physical and metaphorical realms of postmodern life. In Postmodern War Gray relies upon his knowledge of the ways in which the American military utilizes technology to help change the experience of war by altering what it requires of soldiers. He also points out the greater ease of warring—and thus the greater likelihood of war—in the postmodern era.

The Cyborg Handbook brings together works of both fiction and nonfiction in an amalgam that some critics found both refreshing and unique. From a wide variety of contributors, including classic science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick, postmodernist cultural critic Donna Haraway, and space scientists Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline, the pieces in Gray's collection share a fascination with the ways in which humanity is changing or is capable of changing through technological augmentation of the human body. Thus, the book contains "the sort of material that one might expect writers on the history, sociology, anthropology, or cultural politics of technology to use as primary research material," observed Matthew Fuller in the American Book Review. According to Edward Rothstein, writing in the New York Times, many items included focus "on how these beings [cyborgs] break down distinctions between the genders, transform our conception of the body and undo any supposed restrictions on humanity made by nature and culture," and added that "the study of cyborgs ends up saying quite a bit about how culture and society are being interpreted." Though John Alderman, writing for the online publication Hotwired, commented "Too many of . . . [the] essays give the popular imagination as much weight as fact, which comes across as refreshing open-mindedness or confusing pomposity, depending on the writer," he praised essays and interviews from such contributors as Jacke E. Steele, Motokazu Hori, and Patricia Cowings, and wrote, "This vast collection includes some engaging essays, the best of them from members of the 'hands-on' scientific fields."

Gray brings his knowledge of the ever-expanding role of technology in human, and particularly in military, operations to an investigation of war in Postmodern War: The New Politics of Conflict. He traces the changes in United States military strategy since World War II, which, culminating in the Gulf War of the early 1990s, have led to an ever-greater dependence on the technological augmentation of the soldier. This dependence has resulted in a change of the war experience for participants to something altogether different from the face-to-face conflicts of the past. For example, David Keymer, who reviewed Postmodern War in Library Journal, paraphrased Gray's characterization of the Gulf War as a conflict wherein "advanced technology allowed the Allies to kill their adversaries without personal contact and without empathy." Although a Publishers Weekly contributor noted that Gray may have limited his audience to those with "a good command of cyber-age and deconstructionist vocabularies," the reviewer added that even readers skeptical of the author's fundamentally antiwar stance will find in Postmodern War "an incentive to expand their definitions of reality."

Gray once told CA: "One of the strangest things about being a published author is being reviewed. Some reviews are infuriating, such as one of the Cyborg Handbook that claimed that cyborgs were old hat (when the age of cyborgs has just begun!). Book review editors could at least find someone who can understand the book to review it. Would they find someone who can't understand physics to review a physics book?

"A bad review can still be satisfying, such as the attack on Postmodern War in the Proceedings of the Naval Institute that while complaining about the 'academic gobbleygook' did present the central arguments of the book clearly enough to attract the notice of the many people in the military that I know agree with my opinion.

"Many reviews have been excellent, such as John Alderman in the 'webzine' Hotwired and Edward Rothstein in the New York Times on the Cyborg Handbook and Francis Beer on Postmodern War in the American Political Science Review. Perhaps my favorite is a review by Shaar Murray in the British paper the Independent that reviewed Postmodern War along with a novel about future war in a very insightful essay called 'Virtual Wars with Actual Corpses.' I also loved Mark Dery's very favorable comments on Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Post-human Age in Wired.

"I guess the reviews that are most aggravating are by people who I sincerely doubt ever read the book at all. There are many mixed reviews which, on close reading, don't say anything about the book that couldn't be deduced from the cover blurb.

"The very best reviews are usually from actual readers or people who have heard me on the radio or seen me on C-SPAN talking about the book and plan to buy it. I've received dozens of very kind letters from folks like these, and sometimes even gifts, such as a book of paintings by the artist Nabil Kanso who quite correctly felt that we shared the same vision about contemporary war. For dealing with bad reviews I think of these readers, and I've collected the bad reviews on my Web site where I reply to them in detail, often with the response letters that I couldn't get printed where the review was published. At last authors have a public way of responding to unfairness, incompetence, and downright stupidity in reviews."