Though the progress of technology continually pushes life toward virtual existence, the last decade has witnessed a renewed focus on materiality.Design, Mediation, and the Posthumanbears witness to the attention paid byliterary theorists, digital humanists, rhetoricians, philosophers, and designers to the crafted environment, the manner in which artifacts mediate human relations, and the constitution of a world in which the boundary between humans and things has seemingly imploded. The chapters reflect on questions about the extent to which we ought to view humans and nonhuman artifacts as having equal capacity for agency and life, and the ways in which technological mediation challenges the central tenets of humanism and anthropocentrism.Contemporary theories of human-object relations presage the arrival of the posthuman, which is no longer a futuristic or science-fictional concept but rather one descriptive of the present, and indeed, the past. Discussions of the posthuman already have a long history in fields like literary theory, rhetoric, and philosophy, and as advances in design and technology result in increasingly engaging artifacts that mediate more and more aspects of everyday life, it becomes necessary to engage in a systematic, interdisciplinary, critical examination of the intersection of the domains of design, technological mediation, and the posthuman. Thus, this collection brings diverse disciplines together to foster a dialogue on significant technological issues pertinent to philosophy, rhetoric, aesthetics, and science.

Dennis M. Weiss, Amy D. Propen, and Colbey Emmerson Reid gather a diverse group of scholars to analyze the growing obsolescence of the human-object dichotomy in today's world. Radical Interface provides valuable insight for philosophers, literary theorists, rhetoricians, and communication scholars interested in technology design's influence on posthuman subjectivities and interactions.

Introduction: MIND versus THING and Other Central Events of the Twenty-First CenturyPart One: InterfaceIntroductionChapter One: Posthuman Topologies: Thinking Through the Hoard,Anthony MiccoliChapter Two: The Rhetorical Work of the GPS: Geographic Knowledge-Making and the Technologically-Mediated Body, Amy D. PropenChapter Three: Neo-Baroque Computing: Interface and the Subject-Object Divide,Elise TakehanaChapter Four: Techno-Geographic Interfaces: Layers of Text and Agency in Mobile Augmented Reality,John TinnellPart Two: ArtifactIntroductionChapter Five: The Plastic Art of LEGO: An Essay into Material Culture,Jonathan Rey LeeChapter Six: The iPhoneErfahrung: Siri, the Auditory Unconscious, and Walter Benjamins Aura,Emily McArthurChapter Seven: Victorian Cybernetics: Networking Technology, Disability and Interior Design,Colbey Emmerson ReidChapter Eight: Extending Extension: A Reappraisal of the Technology-as-Extension Idea through the Case of Self-Tracking Technologies,Yoni Van Den EedePart Three: UsersIntroductionChapter Nine: Mobility Regimes and the Constitution of the Nineteenth-Century Posthuman Body,Kristie Fleckenstein and Josh MehlerChapter Ten: Living Deliberately, Less or More: Affirmative Cynicism and Radical Design,Matthew A. LevyChapter Eleven: Seduced by the Machine: Human-Technology Relations and Sociable Robots,Dennis M. WeissChapter Twelve: You really are you, right?: Cybernetic Memory and the Construction of the Posthuman Self in Videogame Play,Brendan KeoghChapter Thirteen: Mediating Anthropocene Planetary Attachments: Lars von TriersMelancholia,Nicole Merola