Reading sessions
2023-2024
10 April 2024: TBAA
06 March 2024:
Four thousand weeks: time management for mortals, Oliver Burkeman, 2021, Chapters 1-3
14 December 2023:
Technofeudalism: what killed capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis, 2023, Chapter 6 and Appendix 1
22 November 2023:
The rise of the robots: technology and the threat of mass unemployment, Martin Ford, 2015, Chapters 5 and 10
2022-2023
8 March 2023:
The social dilemma, Jeff Orlowski, 2020, film screening
8 February 2023:
Marjorie Prime, Michael Almereyda, 2020, film screening
7 December 2022:
Andy Clark, Surfing uncertainty: prediction, action and the embodied mind, 2015, preface and Chapter 10
26 October 2022:
N. Katherine Hayles, Postprint: books and becoming computational, 2021, Chapter 4.
2021-2022
5 May 2022:
N. Katherine Hayles, Unthought, 2017, Chapters 2 and 5
6 April 2022:
Kate Darling, The New Breed: How to Think About Robots, 2021, Chapters 6 and 7.
3 March 2022:
Sherry Turkle, Alone Together, Revised edition, 2017, Chapters 7 and 8.
19 January 2022:
Sherry Turkle, Alone Together, Revised edition, 2017, Chapters 5 and 6.
1 December 2021:
Alain Ehrenberg, The Mechanics of Passions, 2018, Chapter 1, Exemplary Brains.
3 November 2021:
Kate Crawford, Atlas of AI, 2021, Chapter 3, Data.
2019-21
Break
2018-19
20 June 2018:
A special screening of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Introduction by Dr John Marks, Associate Professor French and Francophone Studies. 20 June 2018. 1.30pm-5.30pm Hallward Library Screening Room
20 February 2019:
Fred Turner’s “From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism,” Chapters 1-3.
27 March 2019:
Fred Turner’s ‘From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism,’ Chapters 7-8
29 May 2019:
Shoshana Zuboff, ‘Surveillance capitalism and the challenge of collective action,’ and Shoshana Zuboff, ‘Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization’.
2015-2018
Break
2014-15
22 October 2014:
Science fiction film
Discussion led by Jean-Xavier Ridon (French) on time travel in Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1963) and Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys (1995).
25 October 2014:
Broadway Cinema/BFI Science Fiction Film Festival
STC members Chris Johnson and John Marks participated in a panel discussion on science fiction film before a showing of Gattaca (1997) at the Keighton Auditorium, University Park, Nottingham. John Marks introduced the film.
2013-14
9 October 2013:
Kevin Warwick, I Cyborg, 2004, chapter 13
5 February 2014:
Kevin Warwick, ‘Cyborg morals, cyborg values, cyborg ethics’, Ethics and Information Technology 5 (2003), 131-7; ‘Implications and consequences of robots with biological brains’, Ethics and Information Technology 12 (2010), 223-34; (with Huma Shah) ‘Good Machine Performance in Turing’s Imitation Game’ (2013)
19 February 2014:
Discussion with Kevin Warwick (Reading University) of articles read in 5 February 2014 session
2012-13
3 April 2013:
Adam Curtis, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, episode 1
8 May 2013:
Adam Curtis, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, episode 2
26 June 2013:
Adam Curtis, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, episode 3
2011-12
14 December 2011:
Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Atlantic Books, 2011, Introduction, chapters 12 and 15
2010-11
14 July 2011:
Discussion with Lydia H. Liu (Columbia University) of The Freudian Robot. Digital Media and the Future of the Unconscious, University of Chicago Press, 2010, Introduction, chapters 2 and 4
9 March 2011:
Philip K. Dick, ‘Second Variety’, in The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick vol. 2, Gollancz, 1999
20 October 2010:
Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter, Harvard University Press, 1993, chapters 1 and 4
2009-10
23 June 2010:
Erwin Schrödinger, ‘What is Life?’ (1944)
25 February 2010:
Discussion with Andrew Pickering (Exeter University) of The Cybernetic Brain
17 February 2010:
Andrew Pickering, The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future, Chicago University Press, 2010, chapters 7, 8
27 January 2010:
Andrew Pickering, The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future, Chicago University Press, 2010, chapters 1, 2, 3
7 October 2009:
Discussion with Katherine Hayles (Duke University) of How We Became Posthuman
30 September 2009:
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, Chicago University Press, 1999, chapters 4, 6, 10, 11
2008-09
19 May 2009:
Discussion with Margaret Boden (Sussex University) of Mind as Machine.
Cognitive Science Reading Group
6 May 2009:
Margaret Boden, Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science, Oxford University Press, 2006, chapters 4, 7, 13-17
Cognitive Science Reading Group
22 April 2009:
Margaret Boden, Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science, Oxford University Press, 2006, chapters 4, 7, 13-17
Cognitive Science Reading Group
12 November 2008:
Alva Noe, ‘The Enactive Approach to Perception: An Introduction’, in Action in Perception, MIT, 2004
Cognitive Science Reading Group
15 October 2008:
Daniel Dennett, ‘Time and Experience’, in Consciousness Explained, Penguin Books, 1996
2007-08
Cognitive Science Reading Group
7 May 2008:
Norbert Wiener, ‘The Idea of a Contingent Universe’, ‘Cybernetics in History’, in The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, Free Association Books, 1989 [1954]
9 April 2008:
Hanna Damasio, ‘Words and Concepts in the Brain’; Zenon W. Pylyshyn, ‘Connecting Vision with the World’, in The Foundations of Cognitive Science, ed. João Branquinho, Oxford University Press, 2001
Cognitive Science Reading Group
22 February 2008:
Susan Carey, ‘The Representation of Number’; Donald Davison, ‘What Thought Requires’, in n The Foundations of Cognitive Science, ed. João Branquinho, Oxford University Press, 2001
Cognitive Science Reading Group
20 February 2008:
Norbert Wiener, ‘Newtonian and Bergsonian Time’, ‘Gestalt and Universals’, in Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, MIT Press, 1948/1961
30 January 2008:
João Branquinho, ‘Introduction’, in João Branquinho ed., The Foundations of Cognitive Science, Oxford, 2001
5 December 2007:
Norbert Wiener, ‘Computing Machines and the Nervous System’, ‘On Learning and Self-Reproducing Machines’, in Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, MIT Press, 1948/1961
14 November 2007:
Norbert Wiener, Preface and Introduction, Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, MIT Press, 1948/1961
2006-2007
18 September 2007:
Discussion with Don Ihde (Stony Brook University) on Heidegger and phenomenology
5 September 2007:
Jean-Pierre Dupuy, The Mecanization of Mind, Princeton University Press, 1999, chapter 5
15 August 2007:
Jean-Pierre Dupuy, The Mechanization of Mind, Princeton University Press, 1999, Preface and Introduction
20 June 2007:
André Leroi-Gourhan, ‘Technique, Form, Space, The Message’ in The Dawn of European Art: An Introduction to Palaeolithic Cave Painting, Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp. 9-37, 43-4 and 60-66.
17 April 2007:
David Lewis-Williams, ‘An Origin of Image-Making,’ in The Mind in the Cave, Thames & Hudson, [2002] 2004, Chapter 7, pp. 180-203.
14 March 2007:
Bernard Stiegler, ‘Who? What? The Invention of the Human,’ in Technics and Time: the Fault of Epimetheus, vol. 1, Chapter 3, pp. 160-179
14 February 2007:
Bernard Stiegler, ‘Who? What? The Invention of the Human,’ in Technics and Time: the Fault of Epimetheus, vol. 1, Chapter 3, pp. 134-160
2005-06
14 June 2006:
Steven Mithen, ‘The Big Bang of Human Culture: the Origins of Art and Religion’, in The Prehistory of the Mind: A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion and Science, London: Thames and Hudson, 1996, Chapter 9, pp. 171-210
May 2006:
Marquard Smith and Joanne Morra, ‘Introduction’, The Prosthetic Impulse: from a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future, The MIT Press, 2005, pp. 1-12
19 April 2006:
Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb, ‘A Last Dialogue,’ in Evolution in Four Dimensions, 2005, The MIT Press, Chapter 10, pp. 355-83
March 2006:
Samuel Weber, ‘Television, Set and Screen,’ in Mass Mediauras: Form, Technics, Media, Stanford University Press, 1996, pp. 108-28
February 2006:
Joseph Rouse, ‘What Are Cultural Studies of Scientific Knowledge?’ in Configurations 1:1, 1993, pp. 57-94
January 2006:
Don Ihde, ‘Philosophy of Technology’
December 2005:
Sarah Franklin, ‘Science as Culture, Cultures of Science,’ in Annual Review of Anthropology, 1995, 24:163-84
9 November 2005:
Joseph Dumit, ‘Introduction,’ in Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity, Princeton, 2004, pp. 1-18
19 October 2005:
Slavoj Zizek, ‘Introduction, An Encounter Not a Dialogue,’ ‘Organs Without Bodies,’ and ‘Science: Cognitivism with Freud,’ in Organs Without Bodies: Deleuze and Consequences, Routledge, 2003, pp. ix-xii, 14-9 and 111-47
2004-05
20 April 2005:
‘The Historical Background’, in Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition, eds. Robert C Scharff and Val Dusek. Blackwell 2003, pp. 3-79
Mario Biagioli, “Introduction: Science Studies and Its Disciplinary Predicament”, in The Science Studies Reader, ed. Mario Biagoli, New York and London: Routledge 1999, pp. xi-xviii
17 November 2004:
Richard Dawkins, ‘Memes: The New Replicators’, in The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Second Edition 1989, pp. 189-201
13 October 2004:
Andy Clark. ‘Introduction’ and ‘Autonomous Agents’, in Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, Cambridge MA and London: The MIT Press, 1997, pp. 1-33
8 September 2004:
Film viewing: ‘I, Robot’ (Alex Proyas, 2004)
2003-04
27 July 2004:
Manuel DeLanda, ‘Meshworks, Hierarchies and Interfaces’ in The Virtual Dimension: Architecture, Representation, and Crash Culture, ed. John Beckman, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998 http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
Manuel DeLanda, ‘1000 Years of War’, interview by Evan Selinger et al. for ctheory.net http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=383
Manuel DeLanda, ‘Interview with Manuel DeLanda’, Interview by Karlo Pirc, 1994 http://www.kud-fp.si/~karlo/intview/uslanda.html
5 May 2004:
Donna Haraway, ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’, in The Gendered Cyborg Reader, ed. Gill Kirkup et al., Routledge, 2000, pp. 50-7
10 March 2004:
Ray Kurzweil, ‘The Evolution of Mind in the Twenty-First Century’, in Are We Spiritual Machines?: Ray Kurzweil vs. The Critics of Strong AI, Seattle: Discovery Institute, 2002, pp. 12-40
18 February 2004:
Stephen Pinker, ‘Out of Our Depths’, in The Blank Slate, Penguin Books, 2002, pp. 219-40
28 January 2004:
Bruno Latour, ‘Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door-Closer’, in Social Problems 35.3 (June 1988), pp. 298-310
Robert Crease, et al. ‘Interview with Bruno Latour’, in Chasing Technoscience: Matrix for Materiality, eds. Don Ihde and Evan Selinger, Indiana University Press, 2003, pp. 15-26
Bruno Latour, ‘The Promises of Constructivism’, in Chasing Technoscience: Matrix for Materiality, eds. Don Ihde and Evan Selinger, Indiana University Press, 2003, pp. 27-46
1 December 2003:
Friedrich Rapp, ‘Differing Versions of the Concept of Technology’, in Analytical Philosophy of Technology, Dordrecht, Boston and London: D. Reidel Publishing, 1981, pp. 23-36
George Pattison. ‘Technology’, in The Later Heidegger. London and New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 47-74
5 November 2003:
Don Ihde, ‘The Embodiment of Science in Technology’, in Instrumental Realism: The Interface between Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Technology, Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1991, pp. 67-97