October 2009 - February 2010
On Wednesdays, 7.00-8.30 pm, prelude October 21, 2009

A collaboration of the Institute of Philosophy and the DFG Graduate School “Topology of Technology”

We are used to associate terms like “technics” and “technology” with material apparatuses, equipment and hardware. We speak of technology when machines are involved, when mechanical procedures and automatic action take place, when functions are triggered and manipulations or manufacturing processes shape both our view of the world and society. A set phrase that has been coined in Darmstadt and is used since then is that technology assembles a “material dispositif”, thereby evoking the idea of concrete materiality.

The lecture series “Social Machines” focuses on phenomena, that are technical or mechanical rather in a metonymical sense of these terms: constellations of social formations and productive assemblages which consist merely to a lesser extent of thing-like hardware – and, furthermore, wherein efficiency becomes organized in a different way.

Each lecture presents an example of a contemporary or former social field that our common sense does not connect to a dominance of equipment, of hardware or of technological systems without further ado. And again, the event puts the term “technology” to a test: is it reasonable to think of these changes as a kind of informal technologization? As a different type of technicity?

download poster here
download audiofiles here
mailto: hommrich(at)phil.tu-darmstadt.de

 
Program

October 21        Petra Gehring/Dirk Hommrich/Andreas Kaminski/Jens Kertscher/Marc Rölli
                       • Wieso “Sozialmaschinen” ?

October 28       Ludolf Kuchenbuch (Berlin)
                       • Die Verbankung der deutschen Verbraucher 1945-2005

November 4     Christiane Funken (Berlin)
                      • Mediatisierung der Arbeitswelt

November 11    Ralf Bruder (Darmstadt)
                       • Wie Schnittstellen verändern: “Human Interfaces”

November 18    Alfred Nordmann (Darmstadt)
                       • Soft Machines

November 25    Petra Gehring (Darmstadt)
                       • Technisiertes Abschiednehmen: Sterbephasen, Sterbebegleitung, Trauerarbeit

December 2      Jakob Tanner (Zurich)
                       • LSD zwischen 'Mind Control' und 'Doors of Perception'

December 9      Andreas Kaminski (Darmstadt)
                       • Unspürbarkeit anonymer Vergemeinschaftung: Ubiquitous Computing

December 16    Sonja Palfner (Darmstadt)
                       • E-Infrastruktur: Technik als Denkstil?

January 13       Rüdiger Zill (Potsdam)
                       • Apatheia - Besonnenheit - Coolness: Techniken und Technologien
                         des Affektmanagements

January 20      Andreas Gelhard (Darmstadt)
                      • Die endliche und die unendliche Prüfung: Bewährungsproben 1800/1900

January 27      Franz Bockrath (Darmstadt)
                      • “Mortal engines” - oder: der imperfekte Mensch

February 3      Walter Ch. Zimmerli (Cottbus)
                      • Technologie als Kultur - Wissen ist Machen oder: die 2. Dialektik der Aufklärung

February 19     Paul Rabinow (Berkeley)
                      • Recursive Vitality: Reflections on Synthetic Biology