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- Date: Wed, 13 Jan 93 21:09:00 -0600
- From: cylinder@news.weeg.uiowa.edu (Cylinder)
- Subject: File 4--ISPTS Organizing Information
-
- The International Society for the Philosophy of Tools & Space
-
- We are an interdisciplinary organization, small but growing,
- dedicated
- to thoughtful discussion about and research into issues concerning
- tools and space. Currently, we maintain a membership list and
- circulate a short newsletter. Our future plans call for expansion
- - a
- regular journal and a number of conferences are possible in the
- coming
- year.
-
- Our membership list includes philosophers, artists, computer
- programmers, scientists, graphic designers, architects, teachers -
- as
- well as those whose professions are still unnamed. We are not a
- school or a sect or party because we are not in agreement over
- particular doctrines. Our society is bound by an implicit faith in
- the silent potency of tools, space, meaning and metaphor, in a wide
- range of seemingly unrelated fields. Within the scope of our talks
- to
- date, members have raised diverse and fascinating issues for
- consideration:
-
- - A phenomenology of humor, tools and toys
- - Space and the banality of cause and effect
- - Rhetoric and metaphor: language as tool/toy
- - The iconology of computers
- - Speed and annihilation
- - Victimless crimes and crimes of trespass
- - The mechanics of the dreamwork in psycho-analysis
- - Architectural theory and practice
- - Political theories of reterritorialization
- - Viruses: information systems and genetic engineering
- - Media theory
- - Virtual Reality: the emergence of simulacra in social space
- - Transit technology and urban planning
- - Infrastructure catastrophes
-
- The thematic study of tools and space forces us to reconsider and
- sharpen the boundaries separating the various specialties of our
- members. Many of us are involved in concrete and ongoing projects
- which undo customary lines of inquiry and uncover fruitful new
- questions in what was formerly considered "obvious" and explained.
- We
- seek to move beyond conventional genres without abandoning meaning
- and
- beauty for the sake of novelty.
-
- For more information about Cylinder, including membership
- materials,
- please write us with your name and address.
-
-
- CYLINDER
- c/o Graham Harman, Secretary
- Philosophy Dept., DePaul University
- Chicago, IL 60614 USA
- email: cylinder@uiowa.edu
-
- (If you have already written to Cylinder, please refrain from doing
- so
- a second time. Your name and address have been added to our
- mailing
- list and you should be expecting membership materials in the coming
- months.)
-
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