Author: techsocjal

Randal Auxier
(Professor of Philosophy and Communication Studies Southern Illinois University Carbondale; Visiting Full Professor, Department of the Philosophy of Culture Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw)

Abstract:
Does anything ever really “go away,” completely? This paper is a search for real deletion, and the metaphysics that must accompany real deletion. Bergson argued that the full past is active in the present. The issue is access. Metaphysical annihilation is not possible, even for a divine being. Whitehead took a softer line: the past is “objectively immortal,” but its “subjective immediacy” and “relevance” to the present “perpetually perishes.” No real deletion. These are convictions about past actuality. What about possibilities? Presumably past possibilities once had some active relation to some actual present, but, if their moment passed without their being actualized, are they now really deleted? Are might-have-beens truly gone? And in what sense? I will argue that insofar as anything intelligible to us can be “really deleted,” it must belong to a constellation of possibilities (my term) that never ingresses (Whitehead’s term), due to its incompatibility with a collection of possibilities that does ingress (again my term). Not ingressing is not real deletion until actuality has drained such a constellation of might-have-beens of all potency. It is a process. Real deletion is, therefore, enacted in the present, as actuality is related to possibility in any moment. There must come a moment when a constellation of un-enacted possibilities loses all potency, and the act (sometimes quite dramatically) whereby a constellation loses its last measure of potency is all we can mean by “real deletion”: the end of a process. To “delete” in general, then, is to devalue some clusters (my term) of possibilities in their relation to other clusters possibilities, until a constellation is separated from the clusters possessing some potency, and becomes a “constellation.” It is the only deletion consistent with the continuity of the actual and the possible. This argument therefore crosses the digital/analogue divide and shows one feature of their continuity.

Randall Auxier is a Professor of Philosophy and Communication Studies at Southern Illinois University and a Visiting Professor at the Department of the Philosophy of Culture, Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. Among his research interests are philosophy of culture (including popular culture), aesthetics, process philosophy and theology, post-Kantian continental philosophy, and pragmatism. His publications include: Time, Will and Purpose: Living Ideas from the Philosophy of Josiah Royce (Chicago, Open Court, 2013), The Quantum of Explanation: Whitehead’s Radical Empiricism (with Gary L. Herstein) (Routledge, 2017), Metaphysical Graffiti: Deep Cuts in the Philosophy of Rock (Open Court 2017), and numerous articles on Vico, Bergson, Dewey, Cassirer, Langer, Whitehead and others. He is also Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture (www.eidos.uw.edu.pl).

El Bedoui Imen
(Dr. in sciences and arts techniques, University of Kairouan)

Abstract:
We will explore the connection between the implications of the postdigital in the bio art practices. When technology with its inventions takes a part in the artistic practice, we witness a new age of art creation. By using living material to create a unique living or semi-living artwork, bio artists explore the power of post-digital as a way to express the vital effect. The limit between real and virtual, between biological and virtual seems to be blurred. The openness and the limitless power of digital and post-digital as a possibility for a new creative visions impact the living and its manifestations in artworks. Roy Ascott consider distinction between digital and ‘’post-digital’’ is part of the economy of reality. In his book The Future of Art In Postdigital Age, Mell Alexemberg addresses the “humanization of digital technologies’’. Rethinking art, through the post-digital is also re-considering human creative mind with a new dimensions that goes beyond it limits. How could we consider the potential possibility that offers post-digital for the process of artwork becoming? In which way we could explore that deep and complex connection between the biological and the post-digital for the feature of bio art visions. Through this paper we will try to apprehend how human imagination can reach new territories by exploring the powerful use of technology and the understanding of its dimensions. By melting living material into digital and post-digital field, bio artists play with life to create a posthuman figure expression.

El Bedoui Imen is a doctor in sciences and arts techniques, specialty art theory in the University of Tunis and assistant professor at the Higher Institute of Arts and Crafts Kasserine at University of Kairouan. Her research focus on the Bio art practice and its issues on ethics and Aesthetics, working on the question of limit.

Joseph Cook
(PhD Researcher in Digital Anthropology, University College London, UK)

Abstract:
To many the contemporary corporate office exhibits many qualities reminiscent of Bentham’s Panopticon. Through both the exposed nature of the open-plan physical space and the assumption of workers being overseen through digital technologies, developments around such environments are understandably a concern of many modern labour unions. This paper tries to look at both sides of this argument by engaging with the thoughts and actions of those that design such spaces. Evidence-based designers claim to be delivering democracy, representing the worker in the design process and using data to create more humane spaces. By using online employee surveys, gathering utilisation data through sensors, swipe cards or video recordings, and interviewing workers, workplace strategy and design professionals aim to create spaces that not only work for business, but also take into account worker preferences in creating spaces that promote wellbeing and employee satisfaction. To labour unions though the cons of such engagement are often seen as outweighing the pros – with the ‘evidence’ gathered simply a continuation of scientific management into white collar professions, cleverly disguising the power of such data as concern. This paper draws on information gained through extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the workplace design team of one of the world’s largest architecture firms, along with interviews with trade union officials in the UK, to understand the role of both data-gathering and trade unions in the digital landscape of labour and the physical landscape of the office.

Joseph Cook is a PhD Researcher in Digital Anthropology at University College London (UCL), and a Research Assistant at UCL’s Urban Laboratory. Previously working in architecture, his current ethnographic research is interested in links between architectural design and organisational culture, the anthropology of work and data, and historical and novel forms of measurement in the workplace.

Ivan Dimitrijevic
(Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw)

Abstract:
If we can agree with Giorgio Agamben that the essence of the European thought is to be found in its permanent rethinking its own origins, than in order to comprehend the transformations of work in the post-digital age, we firstly have to try to grasp the original semantics of the concept of work. The work was initially conceptualized by Plato and Aristotle: the ergon argument is discussed both in Republic I and Nicomachean Ethics I. The ergon represents the missing link between dynamis and energeia (in Aristotle) and nature and politics (in Plato): indeed it was considered by contraposing the proper work of man against the work of the technician, of the parts of the body, and of other living beings. Agamben argues that on our definition of work it depends how do we think life, nature, politics, and happiness and what tasks do we assign to the living beings, the body, and the city. All of these things cannot be thought, acquired, practiced, without referring them to the work. In order to get rid of the teleological structure of Western metaphysics and its bio-political apparatuses, which reduces the bios, the body, and social activities to functions of metaphysical operations of the soul, Agamben elaborates the idea of inoperativness (inoperosità), that is, of a work (opera) that does not aim at its own completion: in other words, a work that produces pure potentiality of working and living and that consequently generates freedom from metaphysics. Such an important theoretical contribution will be examined by comparing Agamben’s semantics of inoperativness and the ethical dimension of the ancient concept of ergon.

Ivan Dimitrijević studied philosophy at the University of Trieste. He holds the PhD in cultural studies from the University of Warsaw and teaches at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales”. He has published several articles and essays in political philosophy and ethics, mainly by applying the Begriffsgeschichte methodology, and is the author of La contraffazione della politica: la paura della fine, la tutela del bios e il potere della socializzazione (Saonara: il prato, 2016) and co-author of Come la teoria finì per diventare realtà: Sulla politica come geometria della socializzazione (Udine-Milano: Mimesis, 2014, with P. Orłowska). He has edited and translated into English Alessandro Biral’s Plato and the Political Knowledge (Saonara: il prato, 2016).

Heiko Feldner
(Centre for Ideology Critique and Žižek Studies, Cardiff University)

Abstract:
The systemic illiteracy of the capital valorisation economy towards its social conditions of existence manifests and perpetuates itself most effectively in the shape of three powerful mythologies: first, the historical grand narrative of ‘1989’, which interprets the unceremonious demise of communism in Europe as a triumph of free market economics and liberal democracy; second, the economic tale of ‘creative destruction’ according to which only a new science and technology offensive could redeem us from the global economic crisis we have entered in 2008; and, third, the libertarian ‘end of work society’ discourse, which renders the decomposition of contemporary work society as a blueprint for a post-capitalist world beyond work. Mutually reinforcing in their denial of the historical finitude of capitalism as a mode of production and way of life, these mythologies shield us from the traumatic realisation of the depth of the eco-economic catastrophe that is unfolding in uncanny slow motion before our eyes. Against this background, my paper looks at the ‘digital revolution’ as a paradigm of economic development, prosperity and growth. How does it relate to the above mythologies? What part, if any, did it play in the history that connects 1989 with 2008? Can it contribute to alternative forms of social synthesis beyond the valorisation of human labour, collaborative forms that may overcome the crisis of modern work society without sliding inadvertently into the abyss of de-civilisation, as political philosopher Hannah Arendt predicted we most probably would. This paper will explore these and other questions through the lens of Marx’ critique of the value-form of social mediation as the historical a priori of capitalist work societies – an unconscious social matrix which pre-configures and encodes the modern world as we know it.

Heiko Feldner is co-director of the Centre for Ideology Critique and Žižek Studies at Cardiff University, UK, and general editor of Bloomsbury’s Writing History series on modern historiography and historical theory. While his recent work focused on the 2008 global economic crisis, he is currently writing a future history of capitalism, entitled The Meaning of 1989.

Michaela Fišerová
(Department of Media studies, Metropolitan University, Prague; Department of Electronic Culture a Semiotics, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Prague)

Abstract:
In my paper, I focus on digital photographs, which are massively shared on contemporary social networks. I propose to grasp the instantly taken and shared photos (snap-shots) as a melancholic technology, which generates visual remains of everyday events. According to my hypothesis, the practice of sharing of vital fragments is supposed to keep the participating users of social networks socially “alive” – more fragments of their lives they share on their “profiles”, more they ask for attention and social acceptance of their lives. The proposed reflection issues from rhetorical understanding of photography as visual metonymy, but it is also strongly inspired by Derridian reflections on recording technologies as on supplementary remains of past events, which are supposed to satisfy the metaphysical desire to grasp individual events and make them socially “present”.

Michaela Fišerová, Ph.D. is a Czech philosopher. She works mostly in the fields of visual studies and contemporary French philosophy, particularly deconstruction and poststructuralism. Her ongoing research concerns rhetorical and social aspects of the problematics of visuality and image, especially photography and signature. She is the author of monographs Partager le visible. Repenser Foucault (Paris: L’Harmattan 2013), Image and Power. Interviews with French Thinkers (Prague: Karolinum 2015) and Deconstructing Signature. Jacques Derrida and Repeating of the Unrepeatable (Prague: Togga 2016). She also publishes in philosophical journals Filozofia (Bratislava, Slovakia) and Philosophy Today (Chicago, USA).

Paweł Frelik
(American Studies Center, University of Warsaw)

Abstract:
The arrival of digital technologies of production has dramatically changed the ways in which audiences in general and fandoms in particular engage cultural production. The conceptions of immaterial labor and affective labor have been especially useful in describing the forms of fan activity, while terms such as prosumption and “playbor” have been deployed in analyses of specific industries and medial forms. Given the multiplicity and ubiquity of forms in which fans perform labor that directly benefits producers, it seems impossible to engage with cultural products without performing immaterial labor, a diagnosis which is depressing in its inevitability of involuntary exploitation. In my presentation, I would like to complicate this seemingly dystopian scenario by focusing on several fan practices which are perceived as outright illegal or whose legality is questionable. Most of these are lumped under the common rubric of media piracy. However, particularly with respect to video games, films, and music (but also, to a lesser extent, magazines, books, and television shows), some of these initiatives cannot be reduced to the activity of illegal file-sharing. Major among them are underground archiving projects whose goal is to catalog, organize, annotate, and preserve bodies of cultural texts in various media. Curated by private online communities and invite-only torrent trackers, such initiatives can be analyzed from several perspectives. In the context of work/labor discussions, they demonstrate the limitations of thinking of immaterial labor as inherently exploitative but also highlight the insufficiency of current copyright laws and official archival projects.

Paweł Frelik is Associate Professor and the Leader of Speculative Texts and Media Research Group at the American Studies Center, University of Warsaw. His teaching and research interests include science fiction, video games, fantastic visualities, digital media, and transmedia storytelling. He has published widely in these fields, serves on the boards of Science Fiction Studies, Extrapolation, and Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, and is the co-editor of the New Dimensions in Science Fiction book series at the University of Wales Press. In 2017, he was the first non-Anglophone recipient of the Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service presented by the Science Fiction Research Association for outstanding service activities.

Jakub Gużyński, Krzysztof Tarkowski
(Institute of Philosophy, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń)

Abstract:
In Inventing the Future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams put forward a leftist vision for society in a post-work world. The authors continue their accelerationist project and, in truly Marxist fashion, call for universal emancipation. They argue that as long as the left retain their preference for ‘folk politics’, they will be unable to overcome neoliberal hegemony. Srnicek and Williams propose that effective politics cannot be built around ideas of localism, direct action, and horizontalism. The Left, via their fetishization of direct democracy, are unable to create stable political structures and need to return to long-term, large-scale goals and to projecting a desirable future. Srnicek and Williams try to learn from the success of neoliberalism and call for a Mont Pelerin of the left. Not wishing, however, to copy the neoliberal mode of operation, their call is for a new hegemony of the left, centred around regaining a notion of the future – a notion which has currently been almost completely colonised by neoliberalist visions, and which equates to a movement towards a dystopian vision of the degradation of our planet. If the Left wants to regain the future, it must do philosophical work to reformulate the basic categories of progress, universalism and freedom. The authors show that under contemporary neoliberalism work is in a crisis that has recently only deepened due to surplus population, automation and jobless recovery. Not wishing to re-establish the classic slogan of social democracy (full employment) the authors call instead for a world without work. To achieve this end, we need three things: full automation, shorter working weeks and a universal basic income. The biggest problems with the implementation of these demands are not economic, rather, political and cultural issues related to deeply rooted views and beliefs on work ethic.

Jakub Gużyński – PhD student at the Institute of Philosophy, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. Currently working on his thesis on John Milbank’s political theology.

Krzysztof Tarkowski – PhD student at the Institute of Philosophy, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. Currently working on his thesis on Ian Hacking’s non-classical philosophy of science.

Nilüfer Pınar Kılıç
(Faculty of Communication in Ankara University)

Abstract:
It is possible to say that the discussions on technological determinism that can be read through Marshall McLuhan and Raymond Williams are reviving in researches on new communication technologies. On the one hand, there are those who uphold the potential, participatory and democratic qualities of technology, and thus advocate that societies will be democratised, and on the other hand, that they will increase inequalities over the commodity of media, surveillance, ownership and power relations. In other respects, it is possible to say that there is a political-economic approach which criticises technological determinism and in terms of being critical, realistic, inclusive ist that discusses different aspects of new communication technologies in macro context. For example, Fuchs, with the critique of technological determinism, states that social media is embedded in the contradictions and power structures of today’s society and argues that this media cannot cause revolutions as techno-optimists explain. Although new communication technologies reflect capitalism as a profit-making institution and unseen exploitation in them continues, on the other hand, individuals participate in this network to communicate and interact. In the context of all these discussions, it will discuss how individuals use new communication technologies in everyday life practices with Bourdieuan perspective. In digital inequality research through Bourdieu’s concepts, it is presented how factors shape inequality and distinction. It can be said that each user does not benefit from information and communication technologies equally. What extent users can benefit from these technologies are depends around many different variables such as income, education, geographic location, age, gender, access tools (hardware, software and link quality, etc.), skills, and auxiliary networks. In this context, it is possible to say that the social mechanisms and the logic of distinction work in digital practices and the inequalities in offline environments are transferred online ones.

Nilüfer Pınar Kılıç graduated at Gazi University, Department of Business Administration in 2007. Then, she worked in a public institution for five years. In 2012, when she started working at the Public Relations and Publicity Department of the Faculty of Communication in Ankara University, she completed her master’s degree at which she analysed the public relations practices of non-governmental organisations. She finished his doctoral degree in 2018 by writing her thesis named “Facebook Usage Practices of Elderly People with Kemalist Orientation in the Context of Populism Discussions”. She is still an academic staff at Ankara University, Faculty of Communication in Turkey.

Michał Kłosiński
(Faculty of Philology, University of Silesia, Katowice)

Abstract:
The paper will focus on presenting an analysis and interpretation of World of Warships videogame in the spirit of hermeneutics. Utilizing the notion of retrotopia, it will depict how this convergent and multimodal game constructs its gameplay and representations (assets) by offering players a playful and nostalgic return to the times of war-focused ship development of national navies from the end of XIX until the mid XX century. World of Warships features a complex and multilayered gameplay economy which is an essential element of the game’s progression and award system. Players earn credits, experience, coal, steel on top of being able to buy premium ships for real money and premium in-game currency – the dubloons. The idea of the game is for the players to work through various technological trees to research and purchase playable replicas of historical vessels which can be utilized in battles against other players or AI. My analysis and interpretation will focus on the problem of utilization of technology to recreate, with archivist scrutiny and historical accuracy both the ships that existed, and the ones which the developers bring to life from declassified military concepts and projects. The question here is twofold: how does virtual technology serve our nostalgia as a tool of creating retrotopian war-machine mythology; and, how the gameplay economy model fortifies and constructs a desire for this nostalgic mythology? The paper will utilize the works of Jean Baudrillard, Zygmunt Bauman, Roland Barthes, Fredric Jameson, Bernard Stiegler, as well as relate to the author’s own works on the hermeneutic of video games.

Michał Kłosiński, assistant professor at The Faculty of Philology, University of Silesia. An active member of Utopian Studies Society and The Society for Utopian Studies. During his doctoral studies he participated in the Paris Program in Critical Theory. He published various articles on Polish literature, literary theory and video games in: „International Journal of Baudrillard Studies”, „Pamiętnik Literacki”, “Teksty Drugie”, „Wielogłos”, „Śwat i Słowo”. He is the author of: Świat pęknięty. O poemach naiwnych Czesława Miłosza [Broken World. On „World. Naive poem” by Czeslav Milosz] (Warsaw 2013), Ratunkiem jest tylko poezja Baudrillard – Teoria – Literatura [Only poetry can save us. Baudrillard – Theory – Literature] (Warsaw 2015) and Hermeneutyka gier wideo. Interpretacja immersja, utopia [Hermeneutics of video games. Interpretation, immersion, utopia] (Warsaw 2018). He also co-edited (With Ksenia Olkusz and Krzysztof M. Maj) More After More. Essays Commemorating the Five-Hundredth Anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia (Krakow 2016) and Ekonomiczne teorie literatury (with Paweł Tomczok) [Economic theories of literature] (Katowice 2016). His current hermeneutical and post-phenomenological research can be placed at the intersection of literary theory, game studies and utopian studies.