The RSA event last week was a whirlwind through so many different technologcical futures that tying everything together was quite a challenge. We roved from Web 2.0 to artificially intelligent robot soldiers in a matter of hours.
Seminar hosted by the Centre for the study of Global Media and Democracy Goldsmiths, University of London Thursday 13 December 2007 Richard Hoggart (Main) Building, Room 137 (ground floor) 430-630 pm There have been many predictions of how new media will transform the nature of politics, making new forms of political engagement and political action possible. Such predictions have accompanied many previous media when introduced, but do the distributive nature of the web and the ‘remediations’ that digital media enable create a genuinely new situation for political practice. This seminar will address this question from a number of perspectives across the world (including Iran, Palestine and India). It will be the first seminar of Goldsmiths’ new Centre for the study of Global Media and Democracy and will be followed by a reception.
Speakers:
Tiziana Terranova, University of Naples Dina Matar, SOAS Sanjay Seth, Department of Politics, Goldsmiths Chair: Nick Couldry, Goldsmiths
ALL WELCOME – FREE EVENT followed by reception
For more details about the Centre, www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/global-media-democracy/
For directions to Goldsmiths, go to www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us
On Friday, Bettina Hoermann and I set up a new email discussion list through jiscmail titled 'Upstream Nano'. We're aiming to build a special interest group on public engagement and nanoscience and nanotechnology, where an exchange of ideas on the particularities of such work are the focus. Joining the list is simple and information can be found here. http://upstreamnano.wordpress.com
I think I've got this before the official release. Screen shot form the first version of the UWS site. In case anyone ever needs to use my email at the university it is now: andy.miah@uws.ac.uk
It's perplexing how i can be invited all over the world to speak about this subject and, on my own doorstep, not a peep. There's a moral here somewhere, and it's a good one. Anyway, visit Human Futures @ FACT, then get down to London next week for Ethical Futures @ RSA where I am speaking to the title 'Justifying Human Enhancement: The Accumulation of Biocultural Capital [straight after which I'm taking a motorcycle taxi to make my train. life is complicated]
The pilgrimage to Olympia after the summer fires in Greece was a very special occasion. It was far more severe than could have been imagined, but also quite poigniant to see the monuments remaining strong.
Ethics, Technology and Identity
Conference, June 18-20 of 2008
Information technology plays an increasingly important role in society and in human lives. Identity Management Technologies (e.g. biometrics, profiling, surveillance), in combination with a variety of identification procedures and personalized services are ubiquitous and pervasive. This calls for careful consideration and design of collecting, mining, storing and use of personal information. This conference aims to discuss the theme of ‘identity’ in light of new (information) technology. Key-note speakers are David Velleman, Oscar Gandy, Robin Dellon and David Shoemaker.
Key-note speakers
- David Velleman, New York University
- Oscar Gandy, University of Pennsylvania
- Robin Dillon, Lehigh University
- David Shoemaker, Bowling Green State University
Call for papers / submission of abstracts
Authors should submit an electronic version of an extended abstract (total word count 800-1000 words). The extended abstract submission deadline is Friday 7th December 2007. Please submit to: ETI@tudelft.nl. PhD students are especially encouraged to submit. Download call for papers.
Important dates
- December 7, 2007 - Deadline for extended abstracts
- February 8, 2008 - Notification of acceptance
- May 1st, 2008 - Registration deadline
- June 18 - 20, 2008 - Conference dates
On the conference topic
Information technology plays an increasingly important role in society and in human lives. Identity Management Technologies (e.g. biometrics, profiling, surveillance), in combination with a variety of identification procedures and personalized services are ubiquitous and pervasive. This calls for careful consideration and design of collecting, mining, storing and use of personal information. Access, rights, responsibilities, benefits, burdens and risks are apportioned on the basis of identities of individuals. These identities are formed on the basis of personal data collected and stored and manipulated in databases. This raises ethical questions, such as obvious privacy issues, but also a host of identity related moral questions concerning (the consequences of) erroneous classifications and the limits of our capacity for self-presentation and self definition. Which conceptions of identity are used when addressing ethical issues regarding information technology? How can the concepts of ‘identity’ and ‘identification’ be understood from a philosophical perspective when discussing morally problematic developments in information technology? What are the philosophical semantics pertaining to reference and identification which may help clarify ambiguities and ethical issues? How can we arrive at a normatively sound conception of personal identity as a starting point for the study of the ethical aspects of the (information) technology that is shaping our lives? This conference aims to discuss the theme of ‘identity’ in light of new (information) technology.
Location and registration
The conference will be held in The Hague, the Netherlands. Registration fees and procedures will be posted shortly.
Organisation / more information
The conference will be organized by Noëmi Manders-Huits. For more information on the conference, please contact ETI[at]tudelft.nl.
I've just finished a reply to Nick Bostrom's 'Letter from Utopia' It will appear on my website in a few days, but here's the final document and it's citation details: Miah, A. (2007) Letter to Utopia, v1.0: A Reply to ‘Letter from Utopia, v1.4’ (Bostrom, 2007). PDF Document. Available Online at: http://www.andymiah.net/documents/utopia1.0.pdf
After the fires in Greece this year, an event has been created to support the village of Olympia on its road to recovery. http://www.scholars-for-olympia.com/
Community, Capital and Cultures:Leisure and Regeneration as Cultural Practice
Dear LSA Members and other recipients,
We are pleased to be circulating the initial announcement and call for papers for the LSA 2008 (8-10 July) conference event to be hosted by Liverpool John Moores University.
Please visit and bookmark the website, where more conference information will included in due course.--
The deadline for submission of proposals is January 15, 2008. See guidelines here
PLEASE circulate this announcement to potentially interested individuals or groups.
We look forward to hearing from you.
With best wishes,
Conference Committee Chair, Deborah Pownall D.Pownall[AT]ljmu.ac.uk
LSA Administration Myrene McFee mcfee[AT}solutions-inc.co.uk
The Institute of Nanotechnology is now offering its fantastic magazine for free electronic download. http://www.nanonow.co.uk/
This weekend, I saw 'The Lady of Burma', a play inspired by the Aung San Suu Kyi. I had read a number of things about her over the years and have always been impressed by her eloquence and this play Also, on BBC2 Monday night, a programme about the Burma uprisings of recent weeks.
New ICA journal - Communication, Culture & Critique Communication, Culture & Critique provides an international forum for research and commentary which examines the role of mediated communication in today's world. We welcome high quality research and analyses from diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, from all fields of communication, media, film and cultural studies, which is critically informed, methodologically imaginative and careful in its exposition and argument. Foci for enquiry can include all kinds of text- and print-based media, as well as broadcast, still and moving images and electronic modes of communication including the internet, games and mobile telephony. We publish research-informed and theory-focused articles, commentaries on evolving and topical issues, research notes and reviews (books, films, DVDs, etc.). Any and all approaches, analyses and perspectives are welcome, but especially those with a qualitative and/or interpretive inflection. Issue 1, vol.1 will be published in March 2008 and subsequent issues in the volume published in June, September and December 2008. We look forward to receiving your contributions to this exciting new journal which we hope will quickly become an important voice in our field, offering lively and innovative perspectives and critiques.
Contributions to CCC are via the online submission system provided by Manuscript Central. To submit your article/note/review, please go to: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cccr and follow the online instructions.
Karen Ross Editor Karen Ross Professor of Media and Public Communication and Director of Graduate Studies School of Politics and Communication Studies University of Liverpool Roxby Building Liverpool L69 7ZT, UK mob: 07798 884110 office: 0151 794 2310 e: karen.ross[AT]liverpool.ac.uk
Science as CultureCALL FOR PAPERS: special issue on ‘Technology, Death and the Cultural Imagination’
Deadline for receipt of abstracts: November 17th, 2007
This special issue will explore concepts of death – its causes, its prevention, its ambiguities, its interfaces with life – and how these relate to technocultures.
As well as technologies of death (as used in warfare, execution and death camps) and technologies closely associated with death (aeroplanes, cars and early industrial technology, for instance), medical technologies which aim to prevent or delay death have had a considerable impact on what it means to die and, conversely, what it means to live. Cryonic suspension for example keeps the body in a form of undeath and offers the possibility of resurrection into a future world while the cloning of replacement body parts blurs the boundaries of identity and thus poses questions about concepts of death, life and individuality. Similarly, technologies which keep the body 'alive' complicate legal definitions of death. Science fiction in particular has been concerned with reconceptualising what it means to die.
We are interested in papers which explore these ideas and their expression in art and literature, including critiques of recent films and publications or re-readings of classics, as well as readings of other cultural objects. We also welcome papers which have a historical perspective and focus on pre-twentieth century technologies of death. Subjects for consideration may include (but are not limited to) the following:
Consumer technologies and 'unusual' death. Vampires. Modern/Postmodern Frankensteins and concepts of (re)animation Technology and the language of death (e.g.,'collateral damage'). Technology, global capitalism and death. Brain death and the preservation of the body. Technologies of/and death as the subject of art. Science fictions of death/undeath. Celebrity resurrections. Drugs and the concept of 'living death'. Technologies and the life of the body after death. New technologies and preservation at the point of death. ‘Ghostly’ body parts and transplanted organs. The status of the unborn or ‘potentially’ human.
Science as Culture is dedicated to exploring the culture of technoscientific expertise and how it shapes the values which contend for influence over the wider society. The journal encompasses people’s experiences at various sites – the workplace, the cinema, the computer, the hospital, the home and the academy. The articles are readable, attractive, lively, often humorous, and always jargon-free. SaC aims to be read at leisure, and to be a pleasure.
Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent, by either post or e-mail (with SaC in the subject line) to either of the following addresses, to arrive no later than November 17th, 2007:
Debra Benita Shaw Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies School of Social Sciences, Media & Cultural Studies University of East London 4-6 University Way London E16 2RD United Kingdom d.shaw[AT]uel.ac.uk
Megan Stern Senior Lecturer in English, Critical Theory & Media Studies Department of Humanities, Arts & Languages London Metropolitan University Tower Building 166-220 Holloway Road London N7 8DB United Kingdom m.stern[AT]londonmet.ac.uk
This week, Craig Venter has been working the UK media to its fullest in what seems a whistlestop tour over to convey his work in the area of synthetic biology. In the UK, news about this broke first in the Guardian on Saturday 6th October. Venter's website promptly indicated that the newspaper was slightly ahead of itself by announcing this work, stressing that publications are not yet in place. It seems now that they were only 3 weeks ahead of themselves as Venter has clearly broken the news on this in the fullest sense. While he still stresses that this work is futuristic and unlikely to give rise to any new life forms within his lifetime, the rhetoric of promise is interesting. Last night on BBC's Hard Talk and on Newsnight earlier in the week, he emphasised the importance of the research for environmental sustainability. This cannot be coincidental, but appears as a decisive, partial rebranding of gentic science. So, here we have a clear handling of the media taking place drawing on persuasive rhetorics about the long-term benefit of experimental science. He talked about modifying humans to ensure they can survive in climates where greater carbonis in the atmosphere. Nice idea. It's all plausible, but we should still be wary of this utilization of discourses to co-opt political support for science.
I'm sure Venter's work over this period will be the subject of many studies on science communication. Things seem much more sophisticated than they were 10 years ago, when the Human Genome was nearing completion. The ante has been upped, so to speak. Now the scientists are much more in tune with how to get the message out. I could not help but feel that the Guardian story was a first litmus test for public opinion. We've not seen the last of this yet.
I met Iain Borden first in 1999 or 2000 at a seminar on technology at Roehampton. Subsequently, I read about his work on Skateboarding and the city and invited him to write a piece for the special edition of Research in Philosophy and Technology I co-edited in 2002. Since then - in part through the mailing list of The Bartlett School of Architecture - I've been drawn back to Iain's work on skateboarding and the city. Just yesterday, I visited The A Foundation in Liverpool, which is currently exhibiting its 'Drum and Basin' (full pipe and pool styled basin) and Iain has an article in the essays that constitute part of this exhibit. It's a phenomenal undertaking and I'm glad to keep being drawn back into Iain's work. Some of my ideas relating to the Olympics and digital culture are slowly coming together and I hope to draw on Iain's work some more. (See previous post about psychogeography.)
Coverley, M. (2006). Psychogeography. Harpenden, Pocket Essentials.
'Of course, it is through the media that psychogeography has gained a degree of mainstream acknowledgement and it is through the varied mediums of the novel and poetry, of film and internet, that it is able to leave a lasting record and to establish a tradition of its own. But, with the return of Robinson in Keiller's work, we are recalled finally to Defoe himself in whom the figure of novelist, pamphleteer and radical combined to provide a lasting template for a future psychogeography in which literary endeavour and political activism are once again inseparable.' (p.137)
Last night, I saw Andrew Dawson's Leitmotif at the Unity Theatre. It was a small crowd - a little too small given the outstanding performance from Dawson. It's the kind of piece which is, at times, abstract enough to provoke the minimally sensitive viewer and accessible enough to engage anyone who ever doubted the medium of performance space. Everyone should see this.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Free audio editor and recorder to, for instance, record yourself when giving a presentation. I figure some of my presentations might actually turn into half-decent manuscripts.
thanks to: emma rich