Hi Ishtiaque, how are you?

I hope you’re doing well. Marie is here next week, and I’m organizing another DCI lecture – you might be interested?

See below. Please feel free to spread the word, the event is open to all.

I’m also putting together another research studio similar to last time , on Wednesday afternoon, with a few PhD students and my Postdoctoral Fellow talking about their work. Small, ~10 people. Are you interested in coming, and/or do you want your PhD student(s) to join? I’m aiming for 2pm-5pm. Let me know asap please. Sorry for the late notice.

Cheers,

Christoph

Dear colleagues and students,

I am very pleased to announce next week’s DCI Lecture will be given by Prof. Andrew Feenberg - many of you know him. He will focus on ‘The Internet’  and explore it through three approaches - actor network theory, the phenomenological concept of world, and Simondon’s concepts of individuation and concretization.

Together with Feenberg, DCI Fellow Marie Ferrario, and colleagues in Europe, I am organizing a seminar this year on ‘Values in Computing’, so we may touch on that subject in the discussion period….

I’m also organizing a small informal ‘research studio’ on Wednesday afternoon, details TBC. If you want to join that, please let me know asap. Similarly, if you’d like an opportunity to meet with Andrew, please do let me know – there is still a bit of time in his itinerary (Wed-Fri next week).

Please spread the word! The full announcement is up on the DCI website at https://wp.me/p6lxwc-A6.  Details below, twitter here.

All the best,

Christoph

Prof Christoph Becker

Associate Professor, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto

Director, Digital Curation Institute, University of Toronto

http://dci.ischool.utoronto.ca

https://twitter.com/ChriBecker

Prof. Andrew Feenberg, DCI Lecture, Feb 14: Three Approaches to the Internet: Network, World, Individuation and Concretization

Please join us for the next DCI Lecture on February 14 at 4pm at the Bissell building, BL728 (7th floor). Light refreshments will be served.  Prof. Feenberg will speak for about an hour, followed by a moderated Q&A period.

Andrew Feenberg is Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, where he directs the Applied Communication and Technology Lab. He has also taught for many years in the Philosophy Department at San Diego State University, and at Duke University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, the Universities of California, San Diego and Irvine, the Sorbonne, the University of Paris-Dauphine, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and the University of Tokyo and the University of Brasilia.  Dr. Feenberg is Directeur de Programme at the College Internationale de Philosophie for the period 2013-2019.

He is the author of Lukacs, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory (Rowman and Littlefield, 1981; Oxford University Press, 1986), Critical Theory of Technology (Oxford University Press, 1991), Alternative Modernity (University of California Press, 1995), and Questioning Technology (Routledge, 1999). A second edition of Critical Theory of Technology appeared with Oxford in 2002 under the title Transforming Technology. Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History appeared in 2005 with Routledge. Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity appeared with MIT Press in 2010. The Philosophy of Praxis: Marx, Lukacs and the Frankfurt School was published by Verso Press in 2014. His most recent book, Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason, appeared with Harvard University Press in 2017. Translations of several of these books are available. Dr. Feenberg is also co-editor of Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia (Bergin and Garvey Press, 1987), Technology and the Politics of Knowledge (Indiana University Press, 1995), Modernity and Technology (MIT Press, 2003), Community in the Digital Age (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) and (Re)inventing the Internet (2012) . His co-authored book on the French May Events of 1968 appeared in 2001 with SUNY Press under the title When Poetry Ruled the Streets.  He has also created the May Events Archive consisting of scanned documents from the events at the Simon Fraser University library http://edocs.lib.sfu.ca/projects/mai68/. With William Leiss, Feenberg has edited a collection entitled The Essential Marcusepublished by Beacon Press. A book on Feenberg's philosophy of technology entitled Democratizing Technology, appeared in 2006. A second book appeared in 2017 entitled Critical Theory and the Thought of Andrew Feenberg. For more on these publications, see https://www.amazon.com/author/andrewfeenberg or consult his personal homepage at www.sfu.ca/~andrewf..

Abstract:

The Internet is unlike anything else in the history of technology that preceded its creation. It is neither a tool nor a machine, but a network. As such it is a new type of technical system. It resembles the telephone system in some respects, but it also has similarities to broadcast networks that distribute entertainment, shopping malls that distribute goods, and transportation systems insofar as it opens new “worlds” to its users. What is more, the users of the Internet take on new capacities and identities through their participation in the network, most obviously the unprecedented absorption in mediated social relations exemplified by Facebook. This talk will attempt to put some order in the understanding of the Internet in terms of three theoretical approaches, loosely interpreted to suit this new object. These approaches are actor network theory, the phenomenological concept of world, and Simondon’s concepts of individuation and concretization.