Hot on the heals of the recent theme issue of Culture Machine that I co-edited with my colleague Patrick Crogan, I have a new article coming out in a theme issue of Environment and Planning A stemming from sessions at the 2010 RGS-IBG conference concerning geographies of the future. This article, entitled ‘Futures in the making’, translates and re-thinks, in a slightly more nuanced way, some of the findings of the fourth chapter of my PhD thesis. Continue reading “New article: Futures in the making: practices to anticipate ubiquitous computing”
Updated: Stiegler bibliography
Just a quick note to say that i have updated the bibliography of English translations of Stiegler’s work I have here on the blog.
Some interesting additions are:
- A keynote for the World Wide Web 2012 conference (held by the W3C).
- An article in the latest issue of Culture Machine, which I co-edited with Patrick Crogan.
- An interview recently published in Parrhesia.
- Some lecture notes for a seminar series, kindly posted by Terence Blake.
Paying Attention – special issue of culture machine
Patrick Crogan and I are pleased to announce the publication of a special issue of the journal Culture Machine concerning the various ways we might examine the commodification of attention. This work stems from our engagement with the work of Bernard Stiegler and draws significant influence from his book ‘Taking Care of Youth and the Generations’. The special issue includes a contribution from Stiegler as well as articles from Jonathan Beller and Tiziana Terranova and an interview with Michel Bauwens.
I blogged about this further on the Paying Attention website:
Patrick Crogan and Sam Kinsley, researchers within the Digital Cultures Research Centre at UWE, have co-edited the just released special issue of the influential Open Humanities Press journal, Culture Machine entitled ‘Paying Attention‘. The issue was drawn from the 2010 conference of the same name, documented on this website, convened by the Digital Cultures Research Centre with funds from the European Science Foundation. With a substantial introduction by the editors, the issue revitalises and updates the critical examination of the workings of the ‘attention economy’ in the context of today’s rapidly emerging realtime, ubiquitous, online digital technoculture. It re-focusses work on this theme of attention in light of the current and emerging technocultural milieu of smart devices, the increasing mediation of experience, and the significant financial speculation in the attention capturing potential of social networking media. The special issue includes an interview with Peer2peer Foundation co-founder, Michel Bauwens; essays by key theorists of attention Jonathan Beller, Bernard Stiegler & Tiziana Terranova; and several papers on topics from Facebook, Free and Open Software, the ecological costs of our attentional technologies, to the problematic role of digital social networking in Istanbul’s recent (2010) European Capital of Culture project. Please visit the Culture Machine website to explore this open access special issue.
A bibliography of Stiegler’s work in English
PLEASE NOTE: This bibliography has been moved to a permanent page, where it will continue to be updated.
Following Ben Robertson’s lead, and courtesy of Daniel Ross’ Twitter stream (and with his permission), here is a complete list of Bernard Stiegler’s work translated into English. Many of these translations are by Ross (notably Acting Out, For a New Critique of Political Economy, Taking Care of Youth and the Generations and The Decadence of Industrial Democracies). Not included in Dan Ross’ list, apparently, are several unpublished works.
UPDATE 2/08/12: I have appended some pieces I had missed from the list and added some further details for some forthcoming texts.
Continue reading “A bibliography of Stiegler’s work in English”
Creating mythologies of innovation – HP’s CoolTown
The stories told about innovation by those in technology development, their managers, and the broad range of commentators can constitute a form of mythology for a company, a sector or an industry. These are complex entities in and of themselves but the states of affairs to which they purported to represent are perhaps more nuanced and, of course, are complicated by such stories. I have been interested in one particular story, and the research project with which it is associated, from HP: ‘CoolTown’. I have conducted interviews with many of those involved in the research team for CoolTown and I have a paper in outline, which I hope to prepare for submission this summer. Continue reading “Creating mythologies of innovation – HP’s CoolTown”
Examples of Design Fiction
I am aware that I have referred several times to ‘Design Fiction‘ on this blog without really offering any examples of what might be meant by the term. I suppose I ought to confess that I am somewhat sceptical about the definition of such a ‘genre’ or practice too, but it is a useful provocation that enables some productive discussion about how particular forms of future are addressed in design practices. Below, then, and in no particular order are some examples of what might be characterised as ‘design fiction’.
Designing with fiction, video
In March I gave a public talk in Cardiff as a part of the Design Wales Form event ’10 things I learnt’. The talk concerned the ways in which particular kinds of future are evoked in the design of computing systems and how these forms of anticipatory practice might be more broadly adopted. The talk was videoed and can now be watched online, see below.
Digital Studies
The purpose of this post, a slightly revised version of an original on the technophilia blog, is to outline an initial reading of ‘digital studies’ in relation to the philosophy of Bernard Stiegler and examine its possible application. On 18th April the Digital Cultures Research Centre hosted a visit by Christian Fauré, a technologist and philosopher, who is a founding member of the Ars Industrialis association. That week also saw Bernard Stiegler, another founding member of Ars Industrialis, deliver a keynote at the World Wide Web international conference, held by the W3C international conference committee, in Lyon (France). In both talks we are introduced to what has been termed “Digital Studies”, by Ars Industrialis in conjunction with the Pompidou Centre’s Institute for Research and Innovation (Institut de Recherche et d’Innovation – IRI) [1].
Continue reading “Digital Studies”
The techno-anthropological virtual
Over on our technophilia blog I recently posted this short introduction and translation of Christian Fauré’s recent commentary on the concept of the virtual:
Last week Christian Fauré, of Ars Industrialis, posted a new blog post concerning what he has called the techno-anthropological virtual. The main substance of his argument, I suggest, is that the conceptualisation of the virtual that we can understand through the work of scholars such as Bergson, Deleuze and Stiegler is founded on technics, as a default of origin for the human. We must therefore understand the virtual in relation to the human as a techno-anthropological issue – it is realised through processes of exteriorisation, as mnemotechnics, and thus intimately bound up with the ways in which human development (becoming) has extended beyond the body-environment relationship and is tied to the creation of organised inorganic matter. The techno-anthoropological virtual is the potentialities that emerge in the associated milieu of trans-individuation, the becoming of assemblages of bodies, technologies and environments, and is concretised in the recording of traces, as language. For humans, then, ‘the virtual’ is the means by which ‘the real’ is articulated and enunciated. Continue reading “The techno-anthropological virtual”
Technicity and the Virtual
On the 19th of April I contributed to the ‘virtual space‘ event held by Passenger Films, combining short talks and film screenings that addressed the theme of ‘the virtual’. Passenger Films is a series of public events initiated by Amy Cutler, a cultural geographer at Royal Holloway, and supported by UCL UrbanLab, that combine talks and film screenings. I had the privilege of speaking alongside Rob Kitchin, Director of the National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis (Republic of Ireland) and co-author of ‘Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life‘.