We warmly invite colleagues to join us for an in-person one-day symposium on Thursday 17th July 2025. To join, please register using the link below.<\/p>\n
The event is organised by the Centre for Science Studies in collaboration with ImaginationLancaster<\/a> and the Data Science Institute<\/a> at Lancaster University, and is funded by the British Academy<\/a> as part of Carolyn Pedwell\u2019s Mid-Career Fellowship: \u2018Speculative Machines and Us: The Making of Computational Cultures\u2019 (2024-25).<\/p>\n NEW: Please see FULL PROGRAMME AND SPEAKER ABSTRACTS AND BIOS\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n The symposium includes contributions from the following speakers:<\/p>\n Keynote speaker<\/strong><\/p>\n Contributors \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n In addition, the event will host the Shadowplay<\/a> interactive installation by Dr Joseph Lindley and Dr Roger Whitham (Lancaster University).<\/p>\n The term \u2018speculative machines\u2019 references Alan Turing\u2019s \u2018universal machine\u2019 (1936), yet it also indexes the speculative operations of emerging forms of generative AI. This one-day symposium will explore transnational genealogies of artificial intelligence and \u2018the digital\u2019 and consider how and why they matter to present and future AI imaginaries, research, and technologies \u2013 and their associated promises, threats, and potentialities. Event contributors are invited to trace backwards from the current focus on, and hype around, pre-trained transformer models and other machine learning technologies to re-engage past or alternative incarnations of AI and digital computing (i.e. cybernetics, post-war neural network research, logic-based and symbolic processing AI, early machine learning, \u201cnouvelle AI\u201d and robotics etc.) and their affective, cultural, socio-technical, political, economic, and ecological particularities, problematics, and, perhaps, \u2018undetonated potential\u2019 (Freeman, 2010). How were past visions of digital mediation linked to changing accounts of human sense perception and an \u2018aesthetic infrastructure of sensorial training\u2019 (Halpern, 2014: 15) \u2013 and with what contemporary resonances, impacts, or provocations?<\/p>\n Amid the increasing entanglement of data analytics, Big Tech, political authoritarianism, ecological extractivism, and neocolonial \u201ccommon sense\u201d, symposium participants may also wish to speculate on the biopolitical and geopolitical futures of generative AI \u2013 and their epistemological, ethical, and environmental implications. If our digital past(s) are not fixed or \u2018lost\u2019 but rather a \u2018space for potential\u2019 (Chun, 2021: 224), what alternative paths and possibilities for human-machine relations might such temporal experiments and explorations open up or activate? How might the afterlives of earlier forms of digital technology and mediation offer a rich archive from which to collaboratively intuit, design, refuse, or fabulate AI futures? Exploring these interdisciplinary themes and questions might include critical and creative engagement with media and cultural theory, science and technology studies, speculative design, computer science, informatics, human-computer interaction, critical data studies, digital humanities, media history, digital arts, digital archive studies, digital sociology and geography, and other relevant fields.<\/p>\n Speculative Machines and Us is funded by the British Academy, with support from the Centre for Science Studies, the Data Science Institute and ImaginationLancaster.<\/p>\n Carolyn Pedwell, Joe Deville, and Nick Dunn, Lancaster University<\/p>\n For any queries contact Carolyn at c.e.pedwell@lancaster.ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
\n
Speculative Machines and Us: Histories and Futures of AI<\/h1>\n
Event details<\/h1>\n
\n
Event organisers<\/h1>\n