Wolfgang Ernst

February 19, 2014.

Wolfgang Ernst, Chair of Media Theories at Humboldt University, Berlin, talks about media archaeology and his book Digital Memory and the Archive, published last year by the University of Minnesota Press.

"Digital Memory and the Archive offers the most compelling and insightful account published to date of how and why objects matter. Moving beyond textual analysis, its careful, theoretically rigorous engagement with the relic—the physicality of the archive—promises to change the direction of the digital humanities. Thanks to this book, we will all now be addressing the microtemporality of archives and the mechanics of remaining. Finally, a definitive collection in English of one of the most brilliant and influential media archaeologists."   -- Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

32:24 minutes.

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Andrew Piper

February 13, 2013.

Andrew Piper, Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and associate member of the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University, discusses his book Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times, published in 2011 by the University of Chicago Press.

“Contending that our lived experience of reading belies naive generalizations about the future of books, Book Was There is an elegantly argued and thoroughly up-to-date tribute to the endurance of books in our evolving digital world."

Professor Piper's first book, which won the Modern Language Association Prize for a first book is entitled Dreaming in Books: The Making of the Bibliographic Imagination in the Romantic Age (Chicago UP, 2009).  He is co-founder of the research group, Interacting with Print: Cultural Practices of Intermediality, 1700-1900.

55:07 mins.

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N. Katherine Hayles

January 30, 2013.

N. Katherine Hayles, Director of Graduate Studies in the Program in Literature at Duke University and widely regarded as the most illuminating public intellectual writing on technology and culture today, talks about her latest book: How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis, Published by the University of Chicago Press.

“With a rift growing between digital scholarship and its print-based counterpart, Hayles argues for contemporary technogenesis—the belief that humans and technics are coevolving—and advocates for what she calls comparative media studies, a new approach to locating digital work within print traditions and vice versa."

40:48 mins.

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John Long

November 28, 2012.

John Long, Professor of Biology and Cognitive Science at Vassar College, discusses his book Darwin's Devices: What Evolving Robots Can Teach Us About the History of Life and the Future of Technology, chosen by the New Scientist as one of the top five books published in the spring of 2012.

“Though [Long] is a gifted storyteller, this is no simple fish tale. The engineering draw of robots is clear, but Long also emphasises the value for science, showing how robots can serve as physical models of biological organisms; evolving biorobots can shed light on why organisms evolved as they did; and robot interaction can illustrate coevolutionary dynamics, as between predators and prey…. With Darwin’s Devices, Long reminds us that science is always an adventure, and that new technology only drives us faster and further into the unknown.” -- Josh Bongard in the New Scientist.

61:59 min.

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