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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Jamshed Bharucha

February 26, 2008.

Biopsychologist and Tufts University Provost Jamshed Bharucha talks about exciting new research on the cognitive and neural basis of music perception and what it tells us about human thought, communication and development.

42:45 min.

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