Christopher Dewdney

“Body piercing is a celebratory premonition of the eventual fusion of human flesh with the machine,” wrote Christopher Dewdney in his 1998 book Last Flesh: Life in the Transhuman Era. According to Mr. Dewdney, the transhuman era is the next stage of human evolution, during which the divisions between humans and machines will eventually disappear. In a review, the Toronto Star raved that the book would “establish Dewdney’s reputation, alongside [Marshall] McLuhan, as one of the nation’s most important futurists.” A fitting comparison, since Mr. Dewdney is a Fellow of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto.

A contributing culture and media panelist on TVO’s Studio 2, Mr. Dewdney has authored three books of popular non-fiction about culture and technology as well as 11 books of poetry, two of which have been nominated for Governor General’s Awards. A first-prize winner of the CBC Literary Competition, Mr. Dewdney also received a third Governor General’s Award nomination for The Immaculate Perception, a 1988 book of essays about consciousness, language and media. In 1984, he was featured in the internationally acclaimed documentary Poetry in Motion alongside William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Michael Ondaatje and Tom Waits.