Past Events

• Technology, Technocracy, and Human Rights Lecture Series
  The Human Rights Program (HRP) and the Science, Technology, and Society Program (STS) at Bard College will present a combined program on "Technology, Technocracy, and Human Rights" for the 2005-2006 academic year consisting of evening lectures and a student-organized conference in early March. The goal of the series is not only to investigate case studies of technology in human rights, but also to address the underlying question of how in the last century technology, broadly defined, has defined the meaning and purview of human rights. A further description of the theme can be found here; specific speakers, dates, and themes are listed below. The student organized conference, "Technology and Human Rights: Wielding the Double-Edged Sword," will take place in the first two weekends of March. Interested students should contact Professor Moynahan at moynahan@bard.edu or Ms. Bridget Hanna, the Research Associate and Acting Administrative Director of STS, at bhanna@bard.edu.
          As a counterpoint to the themed year in STS, the Human Rights Program and STS will also be offering a lecture series in the "Constitutional Ideal" which will question whether law and the constitutional ideal can offer a counterpoint to the technocracy of the modern era.
  
  All events take place at 6:30 p.m. in Olin Humanities Building Room 102 Unless Otherwise Noted.
• Proposed Student Organized Conference:
  Technology and Human Rights Wielding the Double-edged Sword
  Spring 2006
• Friday, May 18, 2007 - Saturday, May 19, 2007, ,
  Games---Simulation---Conflict
  The Second Annual Tech/Action Conference: Presented by the Film and Electronic Arts, Human Rights and STS Programs
  
  May 18 & 19 2007
  
  Friday, May 18th - MPR and Campus Center
  11:00 A.M. Introduction, Greg Moynahan, STS and History Programs, Bard College
  
  11:10-2 P.M. A Non-Zero Sum Game: Buckminster Fuller's The World Game (MPR) SPACE LIMITED: TO REGISTER PLEASE WRITE kate.crockford@gmail.com Further Information Available at: www.worldgame.org
  
  2:15 P.M A Zero-Sum Game: Capture the Flag, Location TBA
  
  4:30 P.M. The Bard Debate Team: Debate as Conflict and Game (MPR)
  
  Evening:
  7:00 P.M. Film 8-Bit (MPR) w/filmmakers M. Ramocki and J. Strawhand
  
  8:30 P.M. Music Bit shifter - 8-bit Music and Technical Description, as Featured in 8-Bit; Music with Greg Fox '08 (MPR)
  
  Saturday, May 19th - Avery Theater and Avery
  On-Going: Digital Art Installation by Ben Kane '09; Games In and Around Avery 116
  
  10:30-5:00 P.M. Talks and Presentations; Schedule On-Line at http://www.bard.edu/hrp/events/
  
  10:30-11:15 Gautam Sethi, Bard Center for Environmental Policy "Classical Game Theory and the Logic of Conflict" Further Information at: http://inside.bard.edu/~sethi/
  
  11:15-12:00 Kathleen Ruiz, Electronic Arts, Renssellaer Polytechnic Institute, "Conditions of Engagement in Game Simulation and its Relation to Recent Works." Further Information at: http://www.rpi.edu/~ruiz/
  
  12:05-12:50 MacKenzie Wark, New School for Social Research. "Gamer Theory - Comments on a New Theory" Further information at: http://www.ludiccrew.org/wark/
  
  12:50-1:35 Eddo Stern, Game Designers, Tel Aviv and Los Angeles "Darkgame: A New Sensory Deprivation Game" Further information at: http://www.eddostern.com/
  
  2:30-2:50 Bonnie Ruberg, Bard '07 "Sex as Conflict in Contemporary Video Games"
  
  2:50-3:35 Ed Halter, Department of Film and Electronic Arts, Bard College "From Sun Tzu to Xbox: Recent Ideas on War and Video Games" Further Information at: http://www.edhalter.com/
  
  3:35-4:05 Scott Siegel, Bard '07, Founder Bard Video Game Club "Designing for Conflict: The Players and the System"
  
  4:15-5:00 Alex Galloway, Dept. of Media, Culture and Communication, New York University "Algorithmic Culture and a Theory of Networks" Further Information at: http://cultureandcommunication.org/galloway/
  
  6:00 "Aesthletics: Whiffle Hurling," with Tom Russotti, MFA Rutgers University. Location TBA Further Information and a Recent Wired Magazine Article at: http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/commentary/games/2007/05/gamesfrontiers_0507
  
  "Tech Action" is Generously Supported by the Africana Studies, Film, Human Rights, and STS Programs, as well as by BCEP, the Language and Literature Di-vision, the Office of the Dean and the Dean of Students http://www.bard.edu/hrp/events/
• Friday, April 14, 2006, , To be announced
  Conference: Human Rights and Technology
  "Wielding the Double Edged Sword—Practicum." First of a two-weekend conference presented jointly by the Human Rights Project and the Science, Technology, and Society Program. This weekend is student centered and consists of a series of workshops that teach and share technical skills that aid in deploying new technologies for social change.
• Thursday, December 15, 2005, 6:30 pm, Olin, Room 102
  Lecture: Shaping Technologies that Affect Our Lives – An Emerging Human Right?
  Presented by Langden Winner, Thomas Phelan Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences and co-director of the Center for Cultural Design, Rensellear Polytechnic Institute
  Today we recognize that technologies of many kinds have the power to affect our well being in fundamental ways. But seldom has the right to participate in the shaping of crucial technologies been upheld as one of the basic human rights. How can we explain the silence that surrounds this issue? What is involved in moving this question onto the agenda of humanity's central concerns?
  Praised by The Wall Street Journal as "The leading academic on the politics of technology," Prof. Winner is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, where he serves as co-director of the newly founded Center for Cultural Design. Mr. Winner is past president of the Society for Philosophy and Technology. In the early 1980s he was consultant on Godfrey Reggio's film "Koyaanisqatsi." Mr. Winner's views on social, political and environmental issues appear regularly in Tech Knowledge Revue, published in the on-line journal "NetFuture". His satires, including The Masked Marauders and Automatic Professor Machine (available on his website at www.langdonwinner.org), appear on occasion, sometimes announced, sometimes not. In May 2005 Langdon gave the Tenth Annual Hans Rausing Lecture for the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge on the topic: "Technology Studies for Terrorists: A Short Course".
• Tuesday, December 6, 2005, ,
  Lecture: "A Democracy of Distinction: Democracy and Constitutionalism in Classical Greece"
  Jill Frank, Univ. of South Carolina (C), will speak on democracy and constitutionalism in classical Greece. She is the author of "A Democracy of Distinction" a text that re-conceptualizes Democracy and constitutionalism out Aristotle's work. A part of the lecture series "Technology, Technocracy, and Human Rights"
• Monday, November 21, 2005, 6:30 pm, Olin, Room 102
  Lecture: Struggles for a Chinese Civil Society in the Information Age: Environmental Activism in China
  (Final lecture title forthcoming)
  Presented by Guobin Yang, Associate Professor, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Barnard College, Columbia University.
  Co-sponsored by the History and Asian Studies Programs.
  This lecture is in conjunction with the History and East Asian Studies programs.
  Prof. Yang has published extensively on Chinese civil society in the information age, environmental activism in china, and China's cultural revolution in history and memory. For a full list of Prof. Yang's publications visit: http://bc.barnard.columbia.edu/~gyang/
• Tuesday, November 15, 2005, 6:30 pm, Olin, Room 102
  Lecture: Infrastructure is a Political Act: Obligation, Place, and the Borders of the Polis
  Presented by Michael Menser, Assistant Professor, Brooklyn College
  Dr. Michael Menser is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College, the Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Technology and Work and a Faculty Fellow at the Center for the Study of Place, Culture, and Politics (both at the CUNY Grad Center.) He has been a member of the NYC Social Forum "seed group" since 2001 and was an invited speaker at the 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. He received his Ph.D. from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2002. Further information on Prof. Menser can be found at: http://depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/philo/Menser.htm
• Tuesday, November 1, 2005, 6:30 pm, Olin, Room 102
  Lecture: Narco-Crime, U.S. Immigration Policy and Rise of Gangs in Latin America in the Era of Globalized Technology
  Speaker to be announced.
• Friday, October 21, 2005, 6:30 pm, Olin, Room 102
  Lecture: Innate Confusions: Nature, Nurture, and all of That
  Presented by Evelyn Fox-Keller, Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  Conceptions of innateness, and of a meaningful distinction between innate and acquired, between nature and nurture, are so widespread as to seem to many to belong to a universal folk-biology. It has even been suggested that such distinctions are the products of a hard-wired (i.e., innate) mental module, a feature of human biology programmed in our genetic makeup, and serious research efforts are being made at identifying and clarifying the nature of such a module. But what if our attribution of innateness to such generic tendencies is itself an expression of those tendencies? When scientists claim that the distinction between innate and acquired is itself innate, are they speaking as scientists or just as ordinary folk, caught up in their own folk biology? Questions about innate and acquired, about nature and nurture, are not only highly charged but also, I will argue, subject to such intrinsic confusion that it may not be possible to address (let alone answer) them scientifically.
  Professor Keller received her B.A. from Brandeis University (Physics, 1957) and her Ph.D. from Harvard University (Physics, 1963). She came to MIT from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric, History, and Women's Studies (1988-1992). Professor Keller has taught at Northeastern University, S.U.N.Y. at Purchase, and New York University. She serves on the editorial boards of various journals including the Journal of the History of Biology and Biology and Philosophy. Her research focuses on the history and philosophy of modern biology and on gender and science. Her book The Century of the Gene was published in October 2000, and her most recent manuscript, Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors and Machines, appeared in April, 2002.
• Thursday, October 6, 2005, 6:30 pm, Olin, Room 102
  Lecture: Constructing Race, Defining Citizens: Racializing and Deracializing Immigrants in U.S. Federal Statistics, 1898
  Presented by Joel Perlmann, Levy Institute Research Professor at Bard College In 1898 the U.S. Bureau of Immigration initiated a classification of immigrants into some 40 categories of "race or people;" nearly all the categories covered Europeans. In 1909 an effort was made to extend this system of classification to the U.S. Census, and the relevant measure passed in the Senate. But the topic is interesting for much broader reasons: discussion of a seemingly narrow and technical matter, namely a statistical classification scheme, illuminates the meaning of race for the debaters and sheds light on the dynamics of ideas, bureaucracy, and organized opposition to official procedures. Senior Scholar Joel Perlmann is Levy Institute Research Professor at Bard College, where he teaches courses in history and sociology, and guides the research program on immigration, ethnicity, and social structure. He recently completed a study on immigrant and second-generation earnings during the last great wave of immigration (ca. 1890–1914) and in the current period, which will be published by the Russell Sage Foundation and the Levy Institute (Fall 2005).
• Monday, October 3, 2005, 5:00 pm, Olin, Room 102
  Publication Party for Research Associate Bridget Hanna
  Publication party for research associate Bridget Hanna '03 and introduction to the themed year "Technology, Technocracy, and Human Rights." Ms. Hanna was the principal writer and coordinator for the only primary document collection on the Bhopal catastrophe, The Bhopal Reader: Remembering Twenty Years Of The World's Worst Industrial Disaster by Bridget Hanna, Ward Morehouse, Satinath Sarangiand. She is presently working on developing a readily-translatable 'cartoon' guide for how impoverished communities can react to industrial catastrophes such as occurred in Bhopal.

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