SPRING 2010 Critical Digital Studies Workshop 2010 March 12, 2010 Arthur Kroker Introduction: Necropolis of Software Arthur Kroker is Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture and Theory, professor of political science, and the director of the Pacific Center for Technology and Culture at the University of Victoria. His most recent projects include the monograph Born Again Ideology: Religion, Technology and Terrorism (New World Perspectives, 2008), and Critical Digital Studies: A Reader, co-edited with Marilouise Kroker (University of Toronto, 2008). His books include, among others, The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism: Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Marx (University of Toronto Press, 2004), The Possessed Individual (St Martin's Press, 1992), Spasm (St Martin's Press, 1993), and Data Trash: The Theory of the Virtual Class, with Michael A. Weinstein (St Martin's Press, 1994). He is the co-editor of the Digital Futures book series for the University of Toronto Press, as well as the peer-reviewed, electronic journal CTheory.





Stephen Pfohl Digital Magic, Cybernetic Sorcery: On the Cultural Politics of Fascination and Fear Stephen Pfohl is a Professor in the Sociology Department at Boston College where he teaches courses on social theory, deviance and social control, postmodernity, social psychoanalysis, and the sociology of technology, art, and culture. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Images of Deviance and Social Control (McGraw Hill, 1994), Death at the Parasite Café (St. Martin's Press, 1992), and Left Behind: Religion, Technology and Flight from the Flesh (NWP/CTheory Books, 2008). He is the co-editor of Culture, Power and History: Studies in Critical Sociology (Brill Publishers, 2006) and author of the forthcoming Venus in Video: Cybernetics and Ultramodern Power. Stephen is also a past president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, a video maker and performing artist, member of the editorial board of the journal CTheory, and founding member of the Boston-based Sit-Com International.





Jackson 2Bears & Marilouise Kroker Code Drift Jackson 2Bears is a Kanien'kehaka (Mohawk) multimedia artist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Victoria. His artworks has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Canada, most recently at: EM-Media (Calgary, AB), the Vancouver Art Gallery, Interaccess (Toronto, ON), SAW (Ottawa, ON), and the North American Indigenous Games (Cowichan, BC) He has also been exhibited internationally in media arts festivals and group exhibitions such as Digital Art Weeks (Zurich, Switzerland), Syncritism (Savannah, GA) and Altered States (Plymouth, UK). He was recently named the recipient of a Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award from the Canada Council for the Arts. jackson2bears.net

Marilouise Kroker is Senior Research Scholar at the Pacific Center for Technology and Culture, University of Victoria. She is the author, with Arthur Kroker, of Hacking the Future (1996). She has co-edited and introduced numerous anthologies including Digital Delirium (1997), Body Invaders (1987), and Last Sex (1993) -- all published by St Martin's Press, as well as Critical Digital Studies: A Reader co-edited with Arthur Kroker (University of Toronto, 2008). She is the co-editor of the Digital Futures book series for the University of Toronto Press, as well as the peer-reviewed, electronic journal CTheory. www.krokers.net www.ctheory.net





Liam Mitchell 'Because none of us are as cruel as all of us': Anonymity and Subjectivation Liam Mitchell is a PhD candidate in Cultural, Social and Political Thought at the University of Victoria. His research concerns social media and boredom. He is the editor of a new graduate journal in political theory called Peninsula: A Journal of Relational Politics.





William Bogard Digital Resisto(e)rs: Information, Affect and Control William Bogard is Deburgh Chair of Social Sciences at Whitman College and the author of The Simulation of Surveillance: Hypercontrol in Telematic Societies (Cambridge University Press, 1996). His writings on digital media theorize its potentials for embodied control and resistance. His recent work explores the relation of information and affect within the context of control societies, and the machinic integration of electronic and political resistance in circuits of networked capital. He is currently writing a paper about control surfaces.





Aya Walraven AR Futurology Aya Walraven is a digital media and internet enthusiast who primarily works in video and web. She an editorial assistant at CTheory and is the head of PACTAC's 'Software Analysis Lab'. A self-appointed internet-culture historian and archivist she observes and documents online behavior, particularly in Japanese youth and anonymous communities.





Anita Girvan Atmospheric Alienation, Carbon Tracking and Geo-Techno Agency Anita Girvan is an interdisciplinary PhD student with a concentration in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought. Her PhD project focuses on the mediating role of the metaphor of the 'carbon footprint' in responses to climate change, and her broader interests are in the cultural and geo-material loops of language, narrative and ecology. She is also a Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS) Fellow at the University of Victoria.

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