The first dozen is full - the 12th issue of "Technology and Language"
has appeared, and with it a new call that invites contributions at the
intersection of the history and philosophy of technology, speculative
metaphysics, and cultural studies.
https://soctech.spbstu.ru/en/issue/12/
www.philosophie.tu-darmstadt.de/T_and_L
The authors of the current issue were invited to consider
writing-the-future along with the future-of-writing. Juliane Henrich and
Siegfried Zielinski discuss how future writing can have a past, with
romantic philosopher-poet Novalis imagining a new language that allows
us today to envision data-mining through the lens of copper-mining.
Wenzel Mehnert and Stefan Gammel show how science fiction and utopian
texts as well as visionary programs for emerging technologies develop
strategies of questioning the present by positing an ontologically
discontinuous future. Writing and the memory of the hand are becoming
obsolete by way of typing and other technical proxies. Questions of
enactment and embodiment in the digital world are complemented by a
presentation of shibari as a technology and art of writing. Guest edited
by YAO Dajuin and LIN Nikita, this special issue originated at the Open
Media Lab of the Chinese Academy of Arts.
New Call for Contributions:
„Speculative Technologies“ (deadline: July 5, 2024), guest editors: Anna
Kotomina and Colin Milburn. It is a distinctive feature of human
language that we can refer to things that aren't there - to events in
the future or the past and even to things that wiill never exist. Does
this hold for technology as well? Can machines and other technical
schemes refer to impossibilities? Can they invite us to engage in
hypothetical thinking about alternate worlds? And where do they come
from, what is the cultural or socio-technical milieu for their
conception? Astronomical clocks invoke ideas of the cosmic order, a
perpetuum mobile reflects the human ambition to conquer physical limits,
von Kempelen’s chess player challenges humans to question human and
machine intelligence, prototypes herald an imagined future, envisioned
carbon reduction technologies enter into calculations of climate futures
- and a machine that is standing still holds the secret to that machine
in motion. There is a long tradition of wish-fullfilment machines
(quantum computers, fusion reactors), and a long tradition of difference
engines with different settings for various contingencies. We invite
historical reconstructions, philosophical reflections, and cultural
technology assessments on this range of subjects.
Other open calls (shortened):
“Computational Models and Metaphors of the Mind” (inquire about upcoming
deadline) Is the meaning of a text accessible to machine learning?
Questions like these have become ever more puzzling. Mind, behavior, and
machine are configured differently at different times, in different
research programs. This concerns questions of intelligence, technology,
and language: What is consciousness, is it possible to artificially
reproduce it? What is a language in terms of information theory and data
models? Can a language be expressive without ontology or semantics? How
significant are shared features of brains and computers – e.g. neural
networks, and how significant are the differences between human and
machine intelligence – e.g. conceptual vs. statistical thinking? (guest
editor: Pavel Baryshnikov)
„Hermeneutics of Technology“ (Deadline: January 8, 2024) For a long
time, hermeneutics was confined to the humanities and arts, to legal and
religious studies, and to the exegesis primarily of texts. In recent
years, however, the hermeneutics of science and technology came into its
own, along with questions of „scientific understanding“ or „hermeneutic
Technology Assessment,“ and along with the challenges posed by
Artificial Intelligence or quantum technology which appear to elude
human comprehension. Sense-making becomes especially important in a
so-called culture of prediction, robustness, and reliability - with
hermeneutics a critical method for analyzing and evaluating the various
ways of making sense. (guest editors: WU Guolin and LUO Dong)
„ChatGPT and the Voices of Reason, Responsibility, and Regulation“
(Deadline: March 5, 2024) — ChatGPT reconfigures the public sphere. It
brings to a head the question: Must we mean what we say? How to take
responsibility for artificially produced text - and how in different
technopolitical traditions to regulate it. The special issue seeks to
highlight three aspects: 1) Large language models (LLMs) and the culture
of dialogue in the context of human-machine interaction. Will a new way
of asking questions bring us into a new world of thinking? 2) „Garbage
in, garbage out“ - training effects, re-enforcement learning,
transparency and the problems of an open or closed society. 3) Legal
regulation of ChatGPT in various sociocultural contexts, technical and
technocratic governance as societies confront the question of how an
intelligence should behave and how it can be bound to the truth. (guest
editors: Elena Seredkina, LIU Yongmou)
Beyond these calls for special topics, any submitted paper and
interdisciplinary exploration at the interface of technology and
language is always welcome. The next deadline for submitted papers in
English or Russian is February 1, 2024.
Queries, suggestions, and submissions can be addressed to
soctech@spbstu.ru or to Daria Bylieva (bylieva_ds@spbstu.ru) and Alfred
Nordmann (nordmann@phil.tu-darmstadt.de).
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