20.583 new on WWW: Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity online; Ubiquity 8.15

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 20, No. 583.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
  www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/cch/research/publications/humanist.html
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

   [1] From: Phillip Barron <pbarron_at_nhc.rtp.nc.us> (54)
         Subject: Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity: The Human & The
                 Humanities

   [2] From: ubiquity <ubiquity_at_HQ.ACM.ORG> (16)
         Subject: Ubiquity 8.15

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 06:52:17 +0100
         From: Phillip Barron <pbarron_at_nhc.rtp.nc.us>
         Subject: Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity: The Human & The Humanities

Press Release

As part of its ongoing "Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity: The Human
& The Humanities" project (ASC), the National Humanities Center makes
public a new website for the initiative which significantly expands
the potential pool of humanists and scientists engaged in the
exploration and examination of topics surrounding the question of human being.

In its first full year of seminars, conferences and other on-site
activities, the ASC initiative has already involved researchers in
fields as diverse as cybernetics, molecular anthropology, brain
imaging, and primatology, as well as philosophers, historians, and
literary scholars. The list of distinguished visitors and
participants in the project to date includes: Sir Patrick Bateson,
Cambridge University; Terrence Deacon, University of California,
Berkeley; Peter Galison, Harvard University; Ian Hacking, University
of Toronto; N. Katherine Hayles, University of California, Los
Angeles; Timothy Lenoir, Duke University; Alan Liu, University of
California, Santa Barbara; Willard McCarty, King's College London;
Sir Paul Nurse, Rockefeller University; Robert Pippin, University of
Chicago; Michael Pollan, University of California, Berkeley; Rita
Raley, University of California, Santa Barbara; Connie Rosati,
University of Arizona; Alexander Rosenberg, Duke University; Mark
Stoneking, Max Planck Institute, Leipzig; Mark Turner, Case Western
Reserve University; and C. Chris Wood, the Santa Fe Institute. You
can find out more about each participant by clicking the links on the right.

The new website, located at
http://asc.nhc.rtp.nc.us/ will facilitate
conversations among the growing list of project participants, archive
video proceedings from conferences and seminars, and provide an
opportunity for sharing and discussing current work in diverse fields
that are challenging traditional notions of "the human." "Whereas, in
the past, poets and philosophers asked what it means to be human,
scientists today are asking what it is to be human," says
<http://asc.nhc.rtp.nc.us/?page_id=57>Geoffrey Harpham, President and
Director of the National Humanities Center. "One of the tasks of our
project is to assemble a number of these people so we can begin to
map this work, so that developments in different fields can be seen
as parts of a wide-ranging movement with a single focal point."

In the coming months, the Center will welcome two new resident ASC
Fellows, a slate of distinguished visitors, and host its second
annual conference as part of the ongoing activities for the ASC initiative.

To learn more about the National Humanities Center, please contact
Don Solomon (<mailto:dsolomon_at_nhc.rtp.nc.us>dsolomon_at_nhc.rtp.nc.us)
or visit the Center's website:
<http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us>www.nhc.rtp.nc.us. For questions about the
ASC initiative, please contact Phillip Barron
(<mailto:pbarron_at_nhc.rtp.nc.us>pbarron_at_nhc.rtp.nc.us).

--
Phillip Barron
<mailto:pbarron_at_nhc.rtp.nc.us>pbarron_at_nhc.rtp.nc.us
National Humanities Center
7 Alexander Drive
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
<http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us>http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us
http://asc.nhc.rtp.nc.us
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 06:57:52 +0100
         From: ubiquity <ubiquity_at_HQ.ACM.ORG>
         Subject: Ubiquity 8.15
This Week in Ubiquity:
Volume 8, Issue 15
April 17, 2007 -- April 23, 2007
UBIQUITY ALERT: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF SLOWLY-LOADING WEBPAGES
      Robert Rosenberger, a philosopher of
technology at SUNY-Stony Brook, offers a
reflection on how phenomenology can be used to
talk about our bodily relations to computers. He
writes in a style accessible to non-philosophers,
and he told Ubiquity associate editor Arun
Tripathis that he hopes this short paper can be
used to "introduce concepts from phenomenology of
technology to students and others new to these ideas."
See <http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v8i15_rosenberger.html>