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Webcast Event Details

"Human Beings and the Machines of Sunshine"
G. Anthony Gorry, Friedkin Professor of Management & Professor of Computer Science, Director, CTTL, Director, W.M. Keck Center for Computational Biology, Jones Graduate School of Management, Rice University/Baylor College of Medicine
 
date:4:00PM   to   5:00PM   US Central (GMT −0500)
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
 
length:1 hour, 0 minutes
 
location:McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall
 
sponsor:Scientia
 
summary:

Machines have undeniably extended and amplified our abilities, relieved us of drudgery and danger, and generally enriched the material aspect of our lives. But as the early Satanic textile mills quickly demonstrated, machines can be intrusive, oppressive and even dehumanizing. Over the past hundred years, however, new technologies have emerged that test our notions of what machines are and how we relate to them. Today, as Harraway has observed, our best machines are made of sunshine; they are nothing but signals, electromagnetic waves and slices of the spectrum. Yet by weaving patterns of light, these devices, of which the computer is the most prominent and protean, can erode the boundaries between nature and technology, reality and artifice, mind and body and person and machine. In this talk, I will discuss the emergence of these machines and suggest some of the ways in which they are changing who we are and what we may become.

 
more info:event website
Biography of G. Anthony Gorry
 
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