The Brandenburg Centre for Media Studies (Potsdam) opens a new series of lectures with N. Katherine Hayles. Under the title Spring Lecture, every (early) year a renowned personality of (international) media studies is invited in association with one of the member institutions of the ZeM. The first of these is the Chair of Media Theory/Media Studies at the University of Potsdam (European Media Studies) with N. Katherine Hayles who will address the topic “Are Sensing Technologies Cognitive? Making A Case’.

As programmable and networked computers move into the world with increasingly complex sensing systems, traditional questions about machine intelligence cease to be very useful to understand and conceptualize these developments. This talk will focus on cognition rather than intelligence and will compare the perspectives of biosemiotics on sign systems in biological organisms with the sensing capabilities of artificial cognitive systems. The issue is not simply terminological but rather illuminates what is at stake in designing and implementing sensing networks, especially in understanding the relation of such systems to the cognitions of their human designers and users.

Person

N. Katherine Hayles is Professor of Literature with focus of research on science and technology, electronic textuality and science fiction. She is the author of numerous books, including Unthought. The Power Of The Cognitive Nonconscious (2017), How We Think. Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis (2012) and How We Became Posthuman. Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics (1999).