HOW TO PARTICIPATE

Participants are invited to attend in-person in the LSA Building Room 1040 or virtually. Advance registration is encouraged.

Register here to attend in-person: https://myumi.ch/PrVPV

Register here to attend virtually: https://bit.ly/46TsaCc

TITLE

Predictions Without Futures / Of Cosmograms and Clockwork

SPEAKER

Sun-ha Hong is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Simon Fraser University.

ABSTRACT

Our dominant technological futures help maintain decrepit horizons of the social. As Brecht once observed: “I stood on a hill and I saw the Old approaching, but it came as the New.” Prediction supplies a powerful conceptual model for this dynamic of stasis through disruption by connecting the technical conceit of predictivity (that criminality or emotion can be anticipated through data-driven modeling) with the mythological use of prediction (where history is an extrapolation of known technological advancements). Drawing from theories of ritual and experiment, I examine the demonstrative, belief-building work that prediction does – from 18th century automata of Defecating Ducks to Amazon warehouses, from the 1956 Dartmouth Conference to the 10,000 Year Clock. What we call “tech” today serves as a legitimising function for capital, and crucial to this function is the active foreclosure of any political future other than more of the same.

This event is part of the DSI Lecture Series, and is co-sponsored by ESC.