The Stanford Humanities Lab is a Center for
Transdiciplinary/Post-Disciplinary Study. We discover
fascinating futures to be explored in ignoring and crossing disciplinary borders.
SHL believes
that some crucial questions — about what it is to be human, about experience in a connected world, about the boundaries of
culture and nature — transcend old divisions between the arts, sciences and humanities; between the academy, industry and
the cultural sphere.
We engage in experimental projects with a "laboratory" ethos — collaborative, co-creative, team-based — involving a
triangulation of arts practice, commentary/critique, and outreach, merging research, pedagogy, publication and practice. Beyond commentary and discussion, we build: new media, interactive archives,
predictive models of social change, collaborative research workshops, art exhibitions.
The SHL agenda encompasses
• animating archives - regenerating, bringing to life,
and fostering new modes of interaction with the storehouses of human, cultural, artistic, scientific achievement - our focus is on the question of the relationship of the human past to efforts at conservation and preservation
• building bigger pictures - putting specialized in-depth research into the context of big human questions; questions, for example, of rapid social change and innovation, the ethical implications of information technology, the character of distributed digital communities, the politics of digital citizenship, the past, present, and future of intellectual property
• enabling co-creative collaboration - developing successful models of teamwork, learner-centered models of training (thinking through doing), and collaborative authoring tools and processes
• building bridges - establishing innovative partnerships between industry, museums, foundations, and high-level university-based research
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Cyberintimacies: technology and human identity. A lecture by Sherry Turkle
Thursday, November 16, 2006 4:00 p.m. Levinthal Hall Stanford Humanities Center In this second lecture of the 2006-07 New Directions in Humanities Research series Entering the Stream, psychologist Sherry Turkle presents her recent work on technology and human identity. Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her book, Evocative Objects: Things we think with, is scheduled to be published in April 2007. She is the author of The Second Self: Computers and the human spirit (MIT Press, 2005) and Life on the Screen: Identity in the age of the internet (Touchstone, 1997). The New Directions in Humanities Research Lecture Series presented by the Stanford Humanities Center.
Regenerative Presence, Remixing the Archives of Lynn Hershman Leeson
On November 30th, the Stanford Humanities Lab in collaboration with artist Lynn Hershman will present work from the ongoing Life to the Second Power (L2) research project. This project will re-animate the existing archive of Lynn Hershman, now housed in the Special Collections Library at Stanford University. Converting the archive into a digital format of hybrid genre will allow users of the content to dynamically revisit the past while simultaneously expanding the audience for this material. Specifically this means building a living archive of Hershman's work inside the 3D online world Second Life. Lynn Hershman will give a tour of L2's work in Second Life. Her voice will be streamed live via the web. The presentation can be experienced from multiple viewpoints. You can create a free account and logon to Second Life or you can observe in a number of designated public locations. The event will be documented as it happens and later made available online.
The Future of Digital Education: Unexpected Outcomes in Second Life!
How will higher education evolve to accommodate digital technologies in the classroom, changing sensibilities among students and new forms of knowledge, learning and expression? This panel discussion will address some emerging challenges posed by the use of digital media, social networks and games within educational contexts. Panelists will speak from a wide range of recent experiences with teaching in virtual or hybrid learning environments and suggest strategies for the future. Panelists include Rebecca Nesson of Harvard Law School, Douglas Thomas of USC's Annenberg School for Communication, Michael Eisenberg of the University of Washington Information School and Henry Lowood of Stanford University. The panel will be moderated by Steve Anderson of the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Please join us on Berkman Island in Second Life on November 13 at 4:00pm (PST/SLT). This panel is sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation's Initiative on Digital Media and Learning and generously hosted by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Participation is limited to 45 audience members, so sign in early. If you already have a Second Life account, use this SLURL to teleport directly to Berkman Island, http://slurl.com/secondlife/Berkman/114/53/24 Accounts in Second Life are free, but they take a few minutes to set up, so you should plan on signing in, creating your avatar and doing some exploring well in advance of the panel. To start your second life, login here: https://secondlife.com/join
From Counterculture to Cyberculture: The Legacy of the Whole Earth Catalog
 Thursday, 9 November 2006, 7:30pm Cubberley Auditorium, School of Education http://www.stanford.edu/~shyeo/wholeearth.htmStewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, Howard Rheingold and Fred Turner During the 1960s, student marchers chanted "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate!" as they railed against computers and the Cold War-era military industrial complex they seemed to represent. But within just three decades, computers had become emblems of countercultural revolution. This symposium will feature a conversation with three people who played key roles in that transformation: Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and co-chairman of the Long Now Foundation Kevin Kelly, former executive editor of Wired magazine and author of Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-Biological Civilization and New Rules for the New Economy Howard Rheingold, author of The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier and Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution Fred Turner, moderator and assistant professor of communication, Stanford University, author of "From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Catalog, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism". This event is sponsored by the Stanford University Libraries, the Department of Communication, and the American Studies Program. It will be introduced by Henry Lowood, of the Stanford University Libraries and the Stanford Humanities Lab, and followed by a public reception.
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