Colloquium on Understanding Digital Events
June 14th 2018 | MediaCityUK, Salford Quays, Greater Manchester
A small gathering of thought leaders to share ideas and influences towards a better understanding.
Using Bergson and Whitehead’s process metaphysics, Kreps’ proposed ‘structure of events’ approach attempts to encompass subjective experience in a durational understanding of ‘events’ as concrete slabs of existence defined by a term or period, in which all physico-chemical processes and personal subjective experience are included. Each such ‘event’ naturally forms part of a ‘structure of events’ contained, overlapping, and containing other events.
As part of a British Academy funded research programme seeking to explore analysis techniques by which this philosophical approach might be incorporated into sociological studies of engagement with digital interfaces, this Colloquium is designed to bring together insights from a range of different specialisms into this multi-dimensional and transdisciplinary question.
Digital interfaces have the unique property of being interactive symbologies where virtual tasks are driven by precise physical gestures, directed by mental will, and by sociological forces. Those unfamiliar with these interfaces, forced by circumstance to engage with them, provide a stark contrast with ‘digital natives’, born into a world where such interfaces are commonplace, able to explore and drive them with alacrity and skill. As we move into an ever more automated and mediated world of infomateriality, the question of personal experience and its place within the real needs asking in new terms, and with potentially new and challenging answers.
Speakers for the event were as follows:
- Mark Coeckelbergh, (University of Vienna, Austria), President of the Society for Philosophy of Technology
- Malcolm Garrett RDI, (Manchester School of Art, UK) Former Master of the RSA’s Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry
- Yasushi Hirai, (Fukuoka University, Japan), Convenor, Project Bergson Japan.
- Chris Bush and Elizabeth Buie, (SigmaUK Ltd, UK*) UX specialists
- Tina Rock, (University of Dundee, UK) Lecturer in Philosophy
- Bernd Stahl, (de Montfort University, UK), Director of the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility
The flyer for the event is available to download here: Understanding Digital Events.
The full programme is published here.
A brief report on the event is published here.
Image and flyer designed by Malcolm Garrett.
Attendance was free, but registration was required.
All six talks are now available to view on YouTube.
*SigmaUK are now NexerDigital
The Colloquium talks, rewritten afterwards as chapters, are now available as a book from Routledge:
