Technology, Mind and Contingency: Matter, Models and Metaphors
Transtechnology Research will host eight research seminars during the session 2008/09. These are open to all academics, visitors and contributing researchers at Transtechnology Research. The seminar series will be organised around the single research theme of the relationship between technology and cognitive processes with each seminar identifying a particular topic and examining it relative to the larger context. The seminars will be led by an identified presenter(s) who will enlist the collaboration of other contributing researchers and make available a short seminal text related to the seminar.
Reading for the seminars will be advised by email and published on the Transtechnology Research Website in advance of the seminars. Meetings will take place in Portland Square B321 between 13.30 and 16.30 and will be preceded by coffee.
The theme will be ‘Technology, Mind and Contingency: Matter, Models and Metaphors’. This seminar series proposes an exploration of a constructivist view of how technological form is determined in a negotiation between competing forces. It will attend to the way technologies are imagined, conceived, constructed, and used and interpreted by particular groups. It will especially focus on the cognitive dimensions of the user’s share in shaping technology, inviting discussions concerning how contingency within a broader intellectual, socio-cultural, economic, etc. context provides a productive nexus to explore interdisciplinary approaches to various knowledge practices that are closely integrated or associated with technology.
The seminars will take place in Portland Square, room B323, from 14.00 to 16.30 on the following dates:
- September 24, 2008. Prof. Michael Punt
Introduction to the theme, its origins, context and relevance [seminar outline] - October 29, 2008. Brigitta Zics
Matter and Flow in Interaction: The Mind Cupola as a case study [seminar outline] - November 19, 2008. John Vines
Emergent Technology and the Ageing Mind [seminar outline] - December 17, 2008. Discussion
The role of practice [seminar outline] - January 21, 2009. Hannah Drayson
Instrumental Cognition [seminar outline] - February 18, 2009. Dr. Martha Blassnigg
Toward a Method for a ‘Nameless Science’ [seminar outline] - March 18, 2009. Gianni Corino
Pervasive Memory [seminar outline] - May 20, 2009. Luis Girão and Len Massey
The art of survival: Drawing lines of power (Len Massey) and Bio-electromagnetism and multi-sensory experience (Luis Girão) [seminar outline] - June 24, 2009. Business Meeting