Category: Uncategorized

New Book: Using Words and Things

With promo code: Product Flyer

Very happy to let you know that my new book on language and technology is out now with Routledge:

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Published by Routledge, see here: http://bit.ly/2sQ877Q

Content. This book offers a systematic framework for thinking about the relationship between language and technology and an argument for interweaving thinking about technology with thinking about language. The main claim of philosophy of technology—that technologies are not mere tools and artefacts not mere things, but crucially and significantly shape what we perceive, do, and are—is re-thought in a way that accounts for the role of language in human technological experiences and practices. Engaging with work by Wittgenstein, Heidegger, McLuhan, Searle, Ihde, Latour, Ricoeur, and many others, the author critically responds to, and constructs a synthesis of, three “extreme”, idealtype, untenable positions: (1) only humans speak and neither language nor technologies speak, (2) only language speaks and neither humans nor technologies speak, and (3) only technology speaks and neither humans nor language speak. The construction of this synthesis goes hand in hand with a narrative about subjects and objects that become entangled and constitute one another. Using Words and Things thus draws in central discussions from other subdisciplines in philosophy, such as philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics, to offer an original theory of the relationship between language and (philosophy of) technology centered on use, performance, and narrative, and taking a transcendental turn.

 

Call for Papers, Posters, Workshops, and Artworks: Robophilosophy 2018

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We invite submissions for research contributions that offer discussions of aspects of social robotics written for interdisciplinary research discussion, from the point of view of one or more (but not limited to) the following disciplines: Philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind and cognitive science, epistemology and knowledge representation, political philosophy, and philosophy of technology, also in culturally comparative perspective), Anthropology Psychology, Political Science, Law, Economy, Sociology, Cognitive Science, Communication Studies, Linguistics, Interaction Studies Robotics, Computer Science, Engineering Art.

Topical focus for papers, posters, workshops and artworks

  • Socio-political challenges of robotization, e.g., changes in political legimitation, expectable polarizations, etc.
  • Changes in power distributions, e.g., across the political, economic, and financial sector
  • Changes in public spaces due to social robotics, e.g., changes in social interaction patterns due to design and functionalities of robots
  • Socio-cultural and socio-political challenges due to massive job loss, e.g., increase of the precariat, new conceptions of work and social recognition
  • Changes in working conditions and employment formats, e.g, types of human-robot ensembles
  • Robots and ethics, e.g. with focus on new formats of “responsible robotics” as R&D paradigm, or new responsibility attributions when robots attain the status of “electronic persons responsible for making good any damage they may cause” (cf. Resolution 20170210IPR61808 of the European Parliament).
  • Re-education and new educations to cope with changes in the workplace, including educational technology
  • Methods of policy making, e.g., the role of the Humanities for research-based policy proposals, necessary changes in the self-conception and research methods of the Humanities
  • Children and robots, robots and the elderly, with focus on socio-cultural values
  • Intercultural philosophy of robotics
  • Conceptual tools for academia-policy dialogue and interdisciplinary research, e.g., analytical and hermeneutic categories from social ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, or ethics redefined for concrete application.

Submission of Abstracts for Research Papers

We invite extended abstracts with references (min. 1000 words, max. 2000 words, excluding references) for research papers on the themes listed above.

Deadline: October 31, 2017; please use formating templates and submission link given here.

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Submission of Proposals for Workshops and Panels

We invite abstracts for workshops and panels (1000-3000 words, describing topic, format, and speakers). Workshops will take 2-hour to 4-hour slots, depending on the proposal and on availability of slots in the final program. Panels will take two-hour slots and, like the other submitted papers, should directly address the workshop theme. The format for workshops is free.

Deadline: September 15, 2017; please use formating templates and submission link given here.

Submission of Abstracts for Posters and Art Installations/Performances

We invite abstracts (1000 words) for posters and for art installations or performances.

Deadline: October 31, 2017; please use formating templates and submission link given here.

Inaugurated as President of SPT

Proud to have been inaugurated as President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT) at last week’s SPT Conference The Grammar of Things in Darmstadt (June 14 – 17). Looking forward to serve SPT in this role and excited about what this function will bring during the upcoming years, and motivated by the fact that Shannon Vallor – former president of the SPT – has been doing such an impressively good job on this… the bar has been set high!

(pictures by Peter Rantasa and Janina Loh, thanks to both of them for capturing the moment)

 

Interview for my inaugural lecture

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In the context of preparations of my inaugural lecture, I have been interviewed for the University of Vienna’s uni:view magazine. The full article can be read here.

I very much look forward to my inaugural lecture on May 10. It takes place at 5 pm on the Faculty’s dies facultatis in the main building’s Großer Festsaal.

(picture taken by Nana Thurner)

Curators will have Impact – interviewed by Artdependence Magazine

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I was interviewed by Etienne Verbist from Artdependence Magazine, an international online magazine covering the spheres of classic, modern, and contemporary art.

Full interview including countless references to contemporary artists and curators who work on/ with technology to be read here.

Picture provided by Samuel Zeller via Unsplash (licensed under CCO 1.0)

Presentation of upcoming book at CSTMS, Berkeley

mit_pressExcited about today’s talk at the STS Working Group, Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society, University of California, Berkeley:

Romantic Cyborgs: Romanticism, Information Technology, and the End of the Machine

Details: here.

For more information on the upcoming book visit MIT Press.