Event

Thursday Talk

Research Seminar: Alex Taylor

Tabular Worldings

Alex Taylor – City University, London

Thursday 26^thSeptember 4pm, Inspace

This talk will explore a line of thinking and the relevance it might have for the design of computational and interactive systems. For now, Alex’s view is that much is to be understood from the close examination of tables and what we do and can do with them. These tabular practices—practices that, at first glance, appear so neutral—invite questions about the capacities computational systems enable to organise worlds and the responsibilities we have for the orderings they enact.

Alex Taylor is a sociologist working in the Centre for Human Computer Interaction Design, at City, University of London. Showing a broad fasciation for the entanglements between social life and machines, his research ranges from empirical studies of technology in everyday life to speculative design interventions—both large and small. Across these realms, he draws on a feminist technoscience to ask questions about the co-constitutive roles human-machine composites play in forms of knowing and being, and how they might open up possibilities for fundamental transformations in society. Most recently, he’s begun to wonder about the abilities of humans and non-humans, together, and to speculate on hybrid compositions that enlarge capacity and offer the chance of something different-than, something more-than.

---

Inspace, 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9YL