p. 19

« Of course, from the beginning of computation as a practice and in fact as part of it, writers have proposed that language itself might be subsumed by formal systems, eradicating the ambiguity that so troubles human society.

As physical computers themselves came into being, scarcely a year has gone by when several corporate or governmental entities have failed to generate multiple press stories about computers that are about to speak–and only recently, in no small part because of the heated attention they receive, have we seen fewer claims that computers are about to start thinking. But it is a core commitment of this book that neither of these events is about to happen, soon if ever.

The reason is not because we and our thought and language are magical entities, beyond the science of computers; it is instead because we are material beings embedded in the physical and historical contexts of our ex-perience, and it turns out that what we refer to as "thought" and "language" and "self" emerge from those physical materialities.

Yes, we can easily build codes that are independent of our bodies; but we don't even know how to conceive of what we call speaking and what we call thinking as independent of our bodies and selves. We can't conceive that the destruction of identity that accompanies the "uploading self" fantasies of so much computer fiction has already and can always happen, because there is no self there to realize it or to feel it. Our selves can only stay where they are, in a singularity that has already happened–and is no nearer than it has ever been. »

(for context, this book was published in 2009)