http://www.merlot.org:80/merlot/ A search of MERLOT materials Copyright 1997-2013 MERLOT. All rights reserved. Thu, 23 May 2013 13:51:56 PDT Thu, 23 May 2013 13:51:56 PDT http://www.merlot.org:80/merlot/images/merlot.gif http://www.merlot.org:80/merlot/ 44 34 http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=707229 © Agnes Heller and Figure/Ground CommunicationDr. Heller was interviewed by Andrew Hines on October 19th, 2012 as part of the Figure/Ground scholarly interview series: http://figureground.ca/interviews/agnes-heller/Ágnes Heller is a Hungarian philosopher. A prominent Marxist thinker at first, she moved onto a liberal, social-democratic position later in her career. Dr. Heller was the student of Georg Lukacs and a prominent member of the Budapest School until she went into exile in 1977 after many waves of political persecution. Since 1986 she has taught at the New School for Social Research in New York City and currently holds the post of Hannah Arendt Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Political Science. Dr. Heller has published widely on a number of subjects in Philosophy of History, Political Science and Ethics, and is the recipient of numerous awards for her writings and service to education and society. Her more recent work has been concerned with aesthetics. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=640875 Dr. Feenberg was interviewed by Laureano Ralon on August 18th, 2010 as part of the Figure/Ground Communication scholarly interview series.Andrew Feenberg is Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, where he directs the Applied Communication and Technology Lab. He has also taught for many years in the Philosophy Department at San Diego State University, and at Duke University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, the Universities of California, San Diego and Irvine, the Sorbonne, the University of Paris-Dauphine, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and the University of Tokyo and the University of Brasilia. He is the author of Lukacs, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory (Rowman and Littlefield, 1981; Oxford University Press, 1986), Critical Theory of Technology (Oxford University Press, 1991), Alternative Modernity (University of California Press, 1995), and Questioning Technology (Routledge, 1999). A second edition of Critical Theory of Technology appeared with Oxford in 2002 under the title Transforming Technology. Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History appeared in 2005 with Routledge. Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity appeared with MIT Press in 2010. Translations of several of these books are available. Dr. Feenberg is also co-editor of Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia (Bergin and Garvey Press, 1987), Technology and the Politics of Knowledge (Indiana University Press, 1995), Modernity and Technology (MIT Press, 2003), and Community in the Digital Age (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004). His co-authored book on the French May Events of 1968 appeared in 2001 with SUNY Press under the title When Poetry Ruled the Streets. With William Leiss, Feenberg has edited a collection entitled The Essential Marcuse published by Beacon Press. A book on Feenberg’s philosophy of technology entitled Democratizing Technology, appeared in 2006. Dr. Feenberg is currently studying online education on a grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). In this exclusive interview with Figure/Ground, Professor Feenberg talks about Marcuse, Heidegger, McLuhan and the philosophy of technology. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=640915 Dr. Mitcham was interviewed by Laureano Ralon on December 29th, 2010 as part of the Figure/Ground Communication scholarly interview series: http://www.figureground.ca/interviews/ Carl Mitcham is Hans Jonas Chair at the European Graduate School EGS and Professor of Liberal Arts and International Studies, Colorado School of Mines. Professor Mitcham is one of the leading American philosophers of technology with a focus on the ethics of science, technology and medicine. Mitcham received his Ph. D. in Philosophy at Fordham University in 1988. He has held academic positions at several institutions in the United States and internationally: from 1970-72 at Berea College, Kentucky as an Instructor in Philosophy; from 1972-82 at St. Catharine College, Kentucky as a Lecturer in Philosophy and Social Science; from 1982-90 at Brooklyn Polytechnic University as an Associate and then a Professor of Humanities. He was a Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Science-Technology-Society Program, Pennsylvania State University from 1989-99, and the founding Director of the Philosophy and Technology Studies Center, Polytechnic University, New York. Mitcham has also been a visiting professor at the Universidad de Pais Vasco, Spain (2003-4), the University of Tilburg and the University of Twente, Netherlands (1998), the Universidad de Oviedo (1993), and the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Mayagez (1988). Mitcham is currently the Director of the Hennebach Program for the Humanities at the Colorado School of Mines, a program which sponsors events with visiting professors in the humanities. Being a primarily engineering school, the Hennebach Program works to incorporate the importance of humanities into their highly regarded technical discipline. As head of the program, Mitcham heads this department that seeks to implement interdisciplinary studies with the assistance of an Advisory Committee. He is also the president of the Society for Philosophy and Technology. Mitcham is the author of several books including: Bibliography of the Philosophy of Technology, with Robert Mackey (1973); Thinking Through Technology: The Path between Engineering and Philosophy (1994); Research in Philosophy and Technology: Social and Philosophical Constructions of Technology (1995); Thinking Ethics in Technology: Hennebach Lectures and Papers, 1995-1996(1997); Engineer’s Toolkit: Engineering Ethics, with R. Shannon Duval (2000); La ética en la profesin de ingeniero: Ingeniera y ciudadanan, with Marcos Garca de la Huerta (2001); Technology and Religion: Oppositions, Sympathies, Transformations (2008); and Science, Technology, and Ethics: An Introduction. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=642808 Dr. Barney was interviewed by Laureano Ralon on April 12th, 2011 as part of the Figure/Ground Communication scholarly interview series: http://www.figureground.ca/interviews/Darin Barney is the Canada Research Chair in Technology and Citizenship and an Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Communications at McGill University. In 2003, Professor Barney received in 2003 the inaugural SSHRC Aurora Prize, awarded for outstanding contribution to Canadian intellectual life by a new researcher. In 2004, he was selected as one of fifteen “Leaders of Tomorrow” by the Partnership Group for Science and Engineering. In 2002, he was the Hixon-Riggs Visiting Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. He has also taught at the University of Ottawa, the University of New Brunswick at Saint John, the University of Toronto at Scarborough, McMaster University, and Simon Fraser University. From 2000-2005, he served on the Advisory Council of the Law Commission of Canada and is currently on the Board of Directors of CKUT Radio McGill. Professor Barney is the author of Communication Technology: The Canadian Democratic Audit (UBC Press: 2005); The Network Society(Polity Press: 2004; second printing 2006); and Prometheus Wired: The Hope for Democracy in the Age of Network Technology (UBC Press/University of Chicago Press/University of New South Wales Press: 2000) which received the 2001 Award for Social and Ethical Relevance in Communication Research by the McGannon Center for Communication Research at Fordham University, was selected as an Outstanding Title in political theory for 2001 by the American Library Association, and was a finalist for the 2002 Harold Adams Innis Prize. He is co-editor with Andrew Feenberg of Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice (Rowman and Littlefield: 2004). Professor Barney earned a B.A (1989) and a M.A. in Political Science (1991) from Simon Fraser University and a Ph.D in Political Science (1999) from University of Toronto. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=683383 © Douglas Kellner and Figure/Ground CommunicationDr. Kellner was interviewed by Laureano Ralon and Justin Dowdall on August 13th, 2012 as part of the Figure/Ground Communication scholarly interview series.URL: http://figureground.ca/interviews/douglas-kellner/Douglas Kellner is a “third generation” critical theorist in the tradition of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School. Kellner was an early theorist of the field of critical media literacy and has been a leading theorist of media culture generally. In his recent work, he has increasingly argued that media culture has become dominated by the forms of spectacle and mega-spectacle. He also has contributed important studies of alter-globalization processes, and has always been concerned with counter-hegemonic movements and alternative cultural expressions in the name of a more radically democratic society. Kellner has written with a number of authors, including (with Steven Best) an award-winning trilogy of books on postmodern turns in philosophy, the arts, and in science and technology. More recently, he is known for his work exploring the politically oppositional potentials of new media and attempted to delineate what they term “multiple technoliteracies” as a movement away from the present attempt to standardize a corporatist form of computer literacy. Previously, Kellner served as the literary executor of the famed documentary film maker Emile de Antonio and is presently overseeing the publication of six volumes of the collected papers of the critical theorist Herbert Marcuse. At present, Kellner is the George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=642445 Dr. Gow was interviewed via Skype by Laureano Ralon on June 21th, 2011 as part of the Figure/Ground Communication scholarly interview series: www.figureground.ca/interviewsGordon Gow is Associate Professor of Communication and Director of the Graduate Program in Communication and Technology (MACT) in the Faculty of Extension at the University of Alberta. From 2003-2006 he was lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics, where he was Director of the Graduate Programme in Media and Communications Regulation and Policy. Dr. Gow is also affiliated with the Centre for Policy Research on Science and Technology (CPROST) at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Gow’s research interests revolve around the impact of social media and other new communication technologies in the areas of public safety, public health, and community engagement. His current projects include a SSHRC-funded study on emergency alerting at Canadian post-secondary institutions, as well as a KIAS-funded study on the use of information technology to support sustainable farming practices in developing countries; Dr. Gow has also been involved with an IDRC-funded study on the use of mobile phones for health surveillance in Sri Lanka and India. IN 2009 he received a grant to develop a facility at the University of Alberta in order to examine the potential for mobile phones and other wireless devices to support scholarly as well as community-engaged research projects. His research projects typically involve close collaboration with community stakeholders, and he has organized several workshops around the theme of communications technology and public safety. Participation at these events has included representatives from community and industry organizations, as well municipal, provincial, and federal agencies. Dr. Gow is the author of two books and numerous journal publications. He currently teaches a graduate level introduction to social media and supervises graduate students in the MACT program. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=642578 Dr. Kallinikos was interviewed by Laureano Ralon on July 10th, 2010 as part of the Figure/Ground Communication scholarly interview series: http://www.figureground.ca/interviewsJannis Kallinikos is a Professor in the Information Systems and Innovation Group, Department of Management at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Dr. Kallinikos’ research has over the last decade increasingly focused on the study of the social and institutional implications of the diffusion of information and information-based artefacts across the social fabric. He is particularly interested in understanding how the diffusion of technological information in all its breeds (text, voice, image) and digital formats impinges upon social life by (re)constructing the foundations of social institutions and the patterns of interaction characteristic of everyday living. In his research he draws on a variety of social science disciplines including sociology and media, information science and semiotics, organization studies, philosophy and art theory. To better accommodate these goals, Dr. Kallinikos formed the Information Growth and Internet Research (TIGAIR) group that is currently conducting research in a range of empirical settings on the formation of the new networked information environment he refers to as The Habitat of Information and the implications such an environment has for people, social processes and institutions. His research and thinking on these matters are documented in a number of publications, including the book The Consequences of Information: Institutional Implications of Technological Change, a number of recent journal articles and conference papers. More easily accessible versions of his ideas can be found in a number of publications made in the bilingual (French/English) online discussion forum telos www.telos.eu.com. Dr. Kallinikos is Chair of the ISIG Research Group and Director of the MSc in Information Systems and Organizations at LSE. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=715296 © John Searle and Figure/Ground CommunicationDr. Searle was interviewed by Andrew Iliadis on November 19th, 2012 as part of the Figure/Ground scholarly interview series: http://www.figureground.ca/interviews/john-searle/Professor Searle received his Doctorate at the University of Oxford and he is currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His work ranges broadly over philosophical problems of mind and language. Recent books include The Mystery of Consciousness (1997), Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World (1998), Rationality in Action (2001), Mind (2004), and Liberté et Neurobiologie (2004). He teaches philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of social science; recent seminars topics include consciousness, free will, and rationality. He received the Jean Nicod Prize in 2000 and the National Humanities Medal in 2004. Among his notable concepts are the “Chinese room” argument against “strong” artificial intelligence. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=642795 Dr. Pitt was interviewed via Skype by Laureano Ralon on March 26th, 2011 as part of the Figure/Ground Communication scholarly interview series: http://www.figureground.ca/interviews/ Dr. Joseph Pitt earned his Ph.D. at University of Western Ontario. He has major research interests in history and philosophy of science and technology, with an emphasis on the impact of technologies on scientific change. His historical interests include Galileo, Hume, and American pragmatism. He is author of several books and numerous articles in the history and philosophy of science and technology. He is Founding Editor of the journal Perspectives on Science: Historical, Philosophical, Social, published by MIT Press, and currently Editor-in-Chief of Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology. Winner of the Alumni Teaching Award and a member of Virginia Tech’s Academy of Teaching Excellence, he teaches regularly at introductory, advanced undergraduate, and graduate levels in philosophy of science and technology and epistemology. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=642262 Dr. Hayles was interviewed by Laureano Ralon on January 2nd, 2010 as part of the Figure/Ground Communication scholarly interview series: http://www.figureground.ca/interviewsKatherine Hayles is a professor in the Program in Literature at Duke University. She is a postmodern literary critic, particularly in the fields of literature and science, electronic literature, and American literature. She received her B.S. in Chemistry from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1966, and her M.S. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1969. She worked as a research chemist in 1966 at Xerox Corporation and as a chemical research consultant Beckman Instrument Company from 1968-1970. Hayles then switched fields and received her M.A. in English Literature from Michigan State University in 1970, and her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Rochester in 1977. She is a social and literary critic. Her scholarship focuses upon the “relations between science, literature, and technology.”Hayles has taught at UCLA, University of Iowa, University of Missouri–Rolla, the California Institute of Technology, and Dartmouth College. She was the faculty director of the Electronic Literature Organization from 2001-2006.