T H I N K

From your own list, the name Haraway jumped out. The trivial reason is that I have her book (Simians, Cyborgs, and Women) ready on my bookshelf (haven't read it) while the others I'll be reading in PDF. The more significant reason is that I'm curious about the cyborg and want to see how it may relate to other concepts, e.g. Hardt and Negri's "machinic exodus" as a means of resistance to Empire, etc.

I think it would also be a good idea to explain about our own theoretical groundings before we start. Most people on the list (Haraway included I think) belong to the "cultural studies" school which I oppose, me being in the same school as Zizek and Badiou, though I like Deleuze better than they tend to do.

I have no complaints with Haraway, I think that's a good choice. I never saw the reading group going in an explicitly feminist route, but I'd be deeply pleased if it did. Here's a chapter from S,C,W to wet the appetite: http://bit.ly/QqE4x ). As far as my interests go, if I had to pick a contemporary writer I'd probably pick Kroker, and for foundations, Heidegger for that "need to seriously read Being and Time some day" reason.

I'm not sure we need to explicitly set up are warring factions from the outset (I"m going for "conversation" rather than "combat"), but we'll no doubt explore these factions as they unravel. I, for one, consider myself a generalist---trained in history of ideas and Anglo-American philosophy. I've been reading a lot of Foucault these days which marks something of a sea change in my own interest.

I'd advocate for Heidegger in general. If we end up doing Heidegger's "Question Concerning Technology", Richard Rojcewicz has recently put out a tremendously thorough and insightful exposition of the text that could be read alongside. I'd be into that. If we do (any part of) _Being and Time_ (which I love, though I'm not sure I could recommend for this setting), Paul Gorner's Routledge Guidebook is a wonderful help. Quinn, if you're liking Foucault, I'd be really interested in exploring the Heidegger-Foucault connection; Dreyfuss and Rayner discuss it from the angle of technology in particular, I think.

I'm also reading Kuhn and Lyotard at the moment, and I'd love help there, and I'm planning to read (small bits of) Feenberg's _Questioning Technology_ in the next few weeks. I'm cramming for a comp...

I think that this is dependent on the definition of technology that is being worked on and from - for example it's clear that Haraway and Deleuze/Foucault have opposing concepts of technology - just as their understanding of 'animal' is very different.

Of the names suggested - Haraway or Heidegger and Virilio would be interesting - beyond this I'd propose David Edgerton's 'The Shock of the Old' (technology and global history since 1900), the speculative realist text - Graham Harman's 'Guerilla Metaphysics' (phenomenology and the carpentry of things)... Then there is the work of Bruno Latour which is nicely framed by the post-deleuzian work of Pierre Levi (becoming virtual) or Herve Fischer's 'digital shock'.

I'm currently reading Badiou's Logic of Worlds, and Lovelock's 'The vanishing face of Gaia' - both of which are a little depressing,

I can help with Kuhn and Lyotard (used to moderate a Lyotard list that we retired last year) even though my reading of Lyotard is quite critical I can probably help here. The Kuhn material is more problematic but the philosophy of science is an area I'm particularly interested in..

oh and I like the decorum and process thoughts..(forgot to say) interesting concept...

Yeah, precisely for that reason a Haraway vs Deleuze/Foucault discussion on technology would be something fresh I think.

I'm always up for Heidegger, also for that "need to seriously read Being and Time some day" reason. I'd like to learn more about Kuhn and Lyotard, too.

James Lovelock should be a good read. I don't know about it being the main one, though, since I'm expecting more of philosophical theory?

Maybe two books? Classic + contemporary, or philosophy-oriented + science/biology-oriented (Lovelock, Dennet, etc)? Or maybe that's asking a little too much...

We're getting some traction on Haraway, so I'll provisionally put that in the hat for selection. If anyone has any deep reservations about Haraway please voice them.

I like the idea of doing two books, in something of an oppositional way (perhaps sussing out differing notions of primary metaphysical concepts, like "technology", "self", etc.). Of course, one book at a time... (right!?) but, we can surely slate a second one should this little experiment prove successful.

I'll give it a few more days for the mulling to continue.

Hello, you all don't really know me, but Quinn was kind enough to extend this invitation to a wide audience, so here I am.

Three books on my self that I have yet to read:
Paul Virilio - Open Sky
Slavoj Zizek - In Defense of Lost Causes
Walter Benjamin - The Arcades Project

I am not singling out these books so much as pointing to my interests. I await your collective decision.

I should probably add that as far as I know, no one really knows anyone else. Isn't Internet anonymity wonderful?

I'd like to suggest this brief text http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121647282/HTMLSTART as a means of discovering the points of difference between our understandings of technology, science and human culture.

If people agree - I don't mind putting a brief reading here first, seems only fair...

The text was passed to me by my partner (psychotherapist) yesterday and it seems brief enough and interesting enough to explore simply.

In part I suggest the text because I'd like to enable us to identify the difference in our positions before anything serious like a haraway versus deleuze/foucaut position is enabled - though actually I'm happy to begin however people want...

Cool, let's start with that and begin discussion. Others agree? So Twitter's gonna be the primary medium? Something like a forum thread seems more beneficial for this, though. Like this comments section. IMO we won't be able to do serious discussions in 140 characters or less.

@bonni07 I've purposely chosen Twitter as the main (but not only) conversational medium because, I hope, it will encourage people to rapidly post small questions/comments/concerns to the group as they read, thus emulating a sort of salon conversation. My experiences with regular Internet correspondence about intellectual matters are that people think of their ideas as terminal, rather than open-ended. This because particularly pernicious when people start writing essays about their thoughts, rather than sentences. I'll admit, 140 characters is particularly limiting for even a single full thought, but that's what services like posterous are for, if you need the extra space. It's an experiment, certainly, but once we have a hash tag I'm hoping we can all track the conversations without losing sight of the content.

I'll be finalizing the philosophy of technology reading group matters later tonight, please add any final comments/suggestions/votes!

Thanks for inviting me to join this conversation, Quinn.

If it's not too late to add my two cents to the book selection, I would be fine with reading any of the authors on the list, with the probable exceptions of Dennett (had enough of him for a while) and Bill Gates. I would be particularly interested in reading Harraway's book, as well as anything by Heidegger, Deleuze, Foucault, or perhaps Benjamin.

As for a hashtag, it looks like "#philtech" isn't in use. Might that be more appropriate, subject-wise?

It's looking like Haraway for the first book, and we'll try to get something to read against Haraway slotted for the second. I like the idea of positioning Foucault or (gasp!?) Deleuze against Haraway, although there seems to be some solid support for a Heidegger reading too. For now, let's leave the second undecided.

If anyone has very strong oppositions about starting with Haraway's "Simians, Cyborgs, and Women" please voice them now, before it's too late.

I second the hash tag #philtech.

So, I'll @ reply everyone that I know to be interested with a new post detailing the final choice of book and a start date.

Viva la philosophy of technology reading group!

simians, cyborgs, and women sounds good! I wonder if anyone has an electronic copy...I've found some of it on the internet already....just curious
@ixmesh (my twitter...it's not letting me log in here for some reason)

I'm just going to say it--I really hope we use Deleuze as the second reading.

O yay, let's get rollin' :) Viva la #philtech!

@ixmesh (and all who's having the same trouble), try refreshing the page after Posterous does a callback if that's not automatic.

#philtech looks good, a twibe might also be a useful way of collating the tweets...

I have an idea for distribution via twitter. Instead of using a #hashtag, how about creating an ID like pgroup, then we @pgroup, this way it gives our tweets a little privacy and I don't make a fool of myself in front of everyone. Maybe this technique looses some functionality gained by the #hashtag I don't know. What do you think?

I appreciate the sentiment, although I'm not entirely sure I grok the idea. I assume that you want to utilize the twitter feature where you only see @ replies to people you are also following?

The disadvantage to this approach is that most Twitter clients, and the website itself, make following hashtags very easy, I think the only way we could follow the timeline of an ID is if we also logged into that ID (which would likely cause all sorts of issues). I think that we should keep it simple for now, and if a serious problem arises we can deal with it then.

i still think creating a twibe (philtech) still looks like a good way of collating the posts. It would come supplied with a working RSS feed as well... and would still allow searches etc

I'm not very familiar with twibe, but I've heard good things. Sure, let's create a twibe as well. (I'm still yet to actually contact everyone... I swear I'll get to it soon).

I wanted to be helpful, so I went ahead and created the twibe & hashtag. Feel free to add yourself to #philtech, etc.

Oops. I inadvertently lied about the hashtag. @sdv_duras did that before me. #philtech

@ZSDP Thanks for doing that, I'm compiling the complete list of people now.