A day for being glad to be in Melbourne.
"Death in the Digital Age" was Simon Longstaff (who I've come across before in a work context), Elizabeth Tan (because of the brilliant Rubik, of course) and Michael Arnold (Melbourne Uni - history and philosophy of science, a major that was always mysterious to me while I was actually doing an arts degree, but seems in retrospect kind of fascinating). Anyway, pretty interesting and I was taken with the idea of the online service that contacts you every month or so to check whether you're still alive and, if you don't reply, then releases whichever pre-written emails you've prepared (e.g. to tell someone any online passwords that might be useful, but creating the possibility of rather less benign uses); also, the questions about obligations to deal with the reputations and identities of the dead in certain ways. Some talk also of the different types of death - social vs embodied.
I had a couple of hours so grabbed a bite then joined the equal love rally outside the State Library for a while, unsurprisingly running into some nice people I knew there within a few steps; I missed the march (if it went ahead) but it never hurts to add another body in support and it's nice to be en masse on the right side of history. Also in evidence along the way: long queues for all kinds of sub-cultural (and probably consumerist) things including for the games shop Mind Games; preparations for Melbourne Fashion Week; etc. Bumped into Cass and associates between MWF sessions themselves on my way back to ACMI for second session...
... which was "Loneliness and Connectivity" - Elizabeth Tan again and Emily Witt (whose Future Sex felt like it touched me only lightly as I was reading it - a reading which took me a while at that - but which I've found myself thinking about a bit since as some of its implications have sunk in more, so it was enjoyable to see Witt in person). My ears perked up at Tan's dropping of the idea of the 'science-fictionalised present' - for her, a way of getting to the unfamiliar in the everyday. More generally, 'loneliness and connectivity' is certainly a topic with its finger on the zeitgeist, although both writers were a bit equivocal when asked whether they thought there was anything to the ideas that we're currently experiencing an epidemic of loneliness, or that we may have lost the ability to be alone, in solitude (both cracking questions).
"Death in the Digital Age" was Simon Longstaff (who I've come across before in a work context), Elizabeth Tan (because of the brilliant Rubik, of course) and Michael Arnold (Melbourne Uni - history and philosophy of science, a major that was always mysterious to me while I was actually doing an arts degree, but seems in retrospect kind of fascinating). Anyway, pretty interesting and I was taken with the idea of the online service that contacts you every month or so to check whether you're still alive and, if you don't reply, then releases whichever pre-written emails you've prepared (e.g. to tell someone any online passwords that might be useful, but creating the possibility of rather less benign uses); also, the questions about obligations to deal with the reputations and identities of the dead in certain ways. Some talk also of the different types of death - social vs embodied.
I had a couple of hours so grabbed a bite then joined the equal love rally outside the State Library for a while, unsurprisingly running into some nice people I knew there within a few steps; I missed the march (if it went ahead) but it never hurts to add another body in support and it's nice to be en masse on the right side of history. Also in evidence along the way: long queues for all kinds of sub-cultural (and probably consumerist) things including for the games shop Mind Games; preparations for Melbourne Fashion Week; etc. Bumped into Cass and associates between MWF sessions themselves on my way back to ACMI for second session...
... which was "Loneliness and Connectivity" - Elizabeth Tan again and Emily Witt (whose Future Sex felt like it touched me only lightly as I was reading it - a reading which took me a while at that - but which I've found myself thinking about a bit since as some of its implications have sunk in more, so it was enjoyable to see Witt in person). My ears perked up at Tan's dropping of the idea of the 'science-fictionalised present' - for her, a way of getting to the unfamiliar in the everyday. More generally, 'loneliness and connectivity' is certainly a topic with its finger on the zeitgeist, although both writers were a bit equivocal when asked whether they thought there was anything to the ideas that we're currently experiencing an epidemic of loneliness, or that we may have lost the ability to be alone, in solitude (both cracking questions).
