Keynote Speakers

Confirmed Keynote Speakers include writer and cultural anthropologist
Dr Mary Catherine Bateson.
Upon retiring from her position as Clarence J. Robinson Professor in Anthropology and English at George Mason University, Mary remains Professor Emerita. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College and serves on multiple advisory boards including that of the National Center on Atmospheric Research, dealing with climate change.  http://www.marycatherinebateson.com/
                       Mary Catherine Bateson

 Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman 

 For thirty years, co-authors Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman have been tracking the human impact of the communication revolution Norbert Wiener’s science of Cybernetics ignited at the midpoint of the twentieth century. Their award-winning book Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics (Basic Books) uncovers the hidden dimensions of Wiener’s personal saga and his science, as they trace the arc of Wiener’s life and his activism that began the ethical debate on the human implications of the new technologies. Conway received her B.A. from the University of New Mexico and earned her master’s degree and was advanced to doctoral candidacy at the University of Oregon, where she pioneered the first interdisciplinary program in communication. Siegelman graduated with honors in philosophy from Harvard and studied philosophy and semiotics as recipient of the Fiske Fellowship to Trinity College, Cambridge.  The two have lectured at more than 40 colleges and universities, and they spent a year as visiting scholars and researchers in the University of Oregon Communication Research Center’s Project on Information and Social Change. More about Dark Hero: The Story Behind the Story. More about Conway & Siegelman: http://conwayandsiegelman.stillpointpress.net

 

David A. Mindell
David A. Mindell is Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing, and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is founder and director of MIT’s “DeepArch” research group in technology, archaeology, and the deep sea. His research interests include the history of automation in the military, the history of electronics and computing, theories of engineering systems, deep ocean robotic archaeology, and the history of space exploration.  http://mindell.scripts.mit.edu/homepage/?page_id=71

 

Andrew Pickering

Professor Andrew Pickering is chair of sociology at the University of Exeter. He has a PhD in theoretical elementary particle physics from University College London and another in science studies from the University of Edinburgh. He was for many years professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has also held distinguished fellowships at MIT, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Princeton University, the Guggenheiim Foundation and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. His latest book,The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future, explores the history of cybernetics as an alternative paradigm for grasping the world from that of the modern sciences. http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/sociology/staff/pickering/

 

Rudolf Seising

Dr. Seising is an Adjoint Researcher at the European Centre for Soft Computing. His main areas of research comprise historical and philosophical foundations of science and technology.
After studies of Mathematics and Physics, he obtained his Ph.D. at the Faculty of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, and Statistics, with a Thesis on Probabilistic Structures in Quantum Mechanics. He later completed a thesis on ‘The Fuzzification of Systems: The Genesis of the Theory of Fuzzy Sets and their first Applications – Their Development until the 70s in the 20th century’.
Dr. Seising has been Scientific Assistant for computer sciences at the University of the Armed Forces in Munich and for history of sciences. He was with the Core unit for Medical Statistics and Informatics and currently is College Lecturer at the Faculty of History and Arts at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. He was Visiting Scholar several times at the University of California, Berkeley. As of 2004 he is Chairman of the IFSA Special Interest Group ‘History’ and as of 2007, of the EUSFLAT Working Group ‘Philosophical Foundations’ and founded the Online journal Archives for the Philosophy and History of Soft Computing in 2013.
http://www.aphsc.org/

 

Bruce Schneier

Dr Bruce Schneier is a world-renowned security expert and author.
Schneier’s work has been marked by a strong interest in the way that technology is used, with his Secrets & Lies a classic in the field. He is widely respected for his views on cyber-warfare and cyber-crime. Norbert Wiener had deep insights in this area, including his comment that “in the long run, there is no distinction between arming ourselves and arming our enemies”.
http://www.schneier.com/