21st Century Wiener Newsletter June 2016

In this newsletter: program, registration, accommodation, and venue details; Social Implications of National Security Workshop opportunity for conference attendees; Wiener in the Press

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Conference Newsletter
Norbert Wiener in the 21st Century:
Thinking Machines in the Physical World

June 2016: One Month To Go!

Program: check out the full conference program here, or use this QR code (or link) to download the 21CW 2016 app:

Registration: click here if you still need to register for the conference.

Accommodation: Information about conference accommodations is available on the 21CW website. Remember that June 13 is the deadline for hotel conference rates, so reserve your room now to lock in the best deal.

Getting Around: The Conference Venue is the University of Melbourne's Law School Building (Level 10), which is located at 185 Pelham Street, Carleton, as shown on the map below. Additional information about the venue (including links to the University of Melbourne's online interactive map) is available here.

As always, we invite you to visit the conference website, and add your name to our linkedin group. In addition, join our mailing list to receive our final few conference newsletters, with important information about events and logistics.

We look forward to seeing you in Melbourne in a month!

Opportunity to attend SINS’9 Workshop

21CW conference attendees are invited to attend the 9th Workshop on the Social Implications of National Security (SINS’9), a full day event on Tuesday, 12 July 2016. The workshop theme for 2016 is The Socio-Ethical Implications of Implantable Technologies in the Military Sector, and you can register (and see information about the Workshop Program) for no cost at the following link: http://www.katinamichael.com/call-for-papers/2016/3/18/9th-workshop-social-implications-national-security.

Convenors for this event are:
Katina Michael (University of Wollongong),
M.G. Michael (University of Wollongong),
Jai C. Galliot (University of New South Wales), and
Rob Nicholls (University of New South Wales)

For further information, please contact Katina Michael (katina@uow.edu.au)

About the SINS workshop series

The Social Implications of National Security workshop series began in 2006 funded by the Australian Research Council, Research Network for a Secure Australia. The RNSA funded the workshop until 2012, and spear-headed the "Human Factor Series" for the lifetime of the research network. Its proceedings have been deposited in a variety of key stakeholders, including the National Library, the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet, the Commissioner for Law Enforcement Data Security in Victoria and the NSW Police Academy libraries of Australia. The workshops have been hosted in Wollongong, Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and Toronto. There have been representatives from government, industry, defense, emergency services organisations, academia, and society at large at each of the workshops.

June Conference Count-Down:
1 Week - June 13: Conference Hotel Reservation Deadline. Reserve now!
1 Month - July 12: Doctoral Workshop & SINS'9 Workshop
1 Month - July 13: Conference Kick-off!

It turns out that the 21CW conferences aren't the first gathering to consider Norbert Wiener's enduring contributions to scientific and cultural thought. The Legacy of Norbert Wiener: A Centennial Symposium brings together, in book form, lectures presented in 1994 at MIT during a symposium held in honor of the 100th anniversary of Wiener's birth. Topics range from discussions of Wiener's main interest to the significance of his work for late twentieth-century technological development.

Former SSIT president (and current Bovay Professor of History and Ethics of Engineering at Cornell University) Dr. Ronald R. Kline's 2015 book The Cybernetics Moment: Or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age charts the rise (and fall) of cybernetics and information discourses across twentieth-century American culture. The book's early chapters include detailed discussions of both Norbert Wiener's and Claude Shannon's work. Kline argues that cybernetics has always been characterized by "disunity," and that attentiveness to complexity—the complexity of interpersonal relationships, multidisciplinary institutions, contested cultural contexts, and discursive networks—is essential to comprehending the twentieth-century’s tangled technological history and appreciating its relevance in the present.

This is one of a series of Conference newsletters.
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To submit ideas for inclusion in future installments of "Wiener in the Media,"
please contact Heather A. Love, Newsletter Editor
Heather.Love@usd.edu