Agora Virtual Speaker Series: Cybernetics in the Republic

October 16, 2020 - 3:00pm to 5:00pm

Since the 1950s, much discourse about automation in the United States has pointed to ancient Athens as an analogue for what automation will make possible due to dramatically increased leisure time: intensive commitment to the arts, public life, and even contemplation. How and when did this analogy start? In a well-meaning effort to begin to answer those questions, this talk ventures into the writings of Norbert Wiener, the MIT mathematician who popularized “cybernetics” and never used the analogy, though (or because) he knew a lot about ancient Athens. We can learn from his refusal to put ancient Athens on a pedestal.

Location and Address

via Zoom Webinar

You can view the recording soon here
 

Presenter

Michele Kennerly (Ph.D. Pitt, 2010) is Associate Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences and (by courtesy) Classics & Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Penn State University. She is the author of Editorial Bodies: Perfection and Rejection in Ancient Rhetoric and Poetics (2018), co-editor of Ancient Rhetorics & Digital Networks (2018) and Information: Keywords (2021), and editor of Changing the Terms of Rhetorical Theory (2021). She is president of the American Society for the History of Rhetoric and serves on the council of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric.