Papers by Marcel O'Gorman
Program Description-If the hellish events of 2020-2021 have left you feeling like the first stirr... more Program Description-If the hellish events of 2020-2021 have left you feeling like the first stirrings of apocalypse are at long last come upon us, you clearly aren't alone. But just what do we do with ourselves, here at the end of all things? What happens to uspsychically, emotionally, socially, politically-when we accept and internalize that events capable of ending human civilization as we've known it have already taken place, and that all we're doing now is waiting for them to unfold in their fullest consequence? We'll be touring some of the most common responses to this understanding-including the turn toward reactionary blood-and-soil nativism, the false comfort of left accelerationism, and the newly hegemonic rhetoric of "resilience"-before exploring what qualities might actually serve us best, as individuals and collectivities, as the epoch on which we've predicated our entire sense of being draws to its inevitable close. By developing the notion that there are capacities to which we have permanent recourse, no matter what else happens, this conversation will hopefully leave you feeling able to face the gathering darkness with grace and equanimity. And, hey, if the apocalypse fails to arrive on time, at least you'll have a bunch of clever new things to say at parties.
Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre eBooks, Jul 5, 2023
Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre eBooks, 2015
Technology and Culture, 2006
When I was about halfway through the essays collected by Harold W. Baillie and Timothy K. Casey i... more When I was about halfway through the essays collected by Harold W. Baillie and Timothy K. Casey in Is Human Nature Obsolete? Genetics, Bioengineering, and the Future of the Human Condition (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005, $24.95), I took a few days off to ...
Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre eBooks, 2021
Intermédialités, Aug 9, 2011
CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts
Augmented Reality Smart Glasses (ARSG) are a recent development in consumer-level personal comput... more Augmented Reality Smart Glasses (ARSG) are a recent development in consumer-level personal computing technology. Research on ARSGs has largely focused on new forms of etiquette for these personal computing devices, but little else has been examined due in part to consumer availability. The most well-known example of ARSGs is Google Glass, which are no longer available for consumer purchase due to privacy concerns. Google has more recently transitioned to industry-focused applications with the Glass Enterprise Edition [1]. Recent consumer-facing iterations on the technology include Snapchat Spectacles and Ray-Ban Stories, which reignite some of the anxieties surrounding wearable cameras. Focals by North, the ARSG product studied in this project, do not have the capacity to record video or audio, thus mitigating the risk of privacy breaches. This study examines how users of Focals employ the device, successfully or not, to facilitate daily activities such as scheduling, communication, wayfnding, and how non-users perceive the interactions of Focals users. Participants wrote blog responses and participated in a focus group on their daily experiences with the glasses; they also speculated on potential uses and features of future iterations relating to accessibility and entertainment purposes. Focals by North, a relatively low-cost ARSG, aims to make this tech mass market to "seamlessly [blend] technology into our world" [2]. However, this study found participants preferred choice when receiving notifcations, and greatly questioned the need for notifcations to appear in their feld of vision. We anticipate that these results will inform frameworks for assessing consumer facing ARSG products in future work.
Angelaki, Mar 1, 2013
This article mobilizes the troublesome and unrigorous concept of love to open an oblique entry in... more This article mobilizes the troublesome and unrigorous concept of love to open an oblique entry into the equally troublesome concepts of object-oriented ontology and speculative realism. Issues of object fetishism, species companionship, bestiality, and assemblages of desire are traced in the theories of Graham Harman, Donna Haraway, Jane Bennett, Mario Perniola, and other posthumanist thinkers. Both romantic and Christian love are identified in the discursive practices of speculative realists as a way of outlining recurrent tropes in posthumanist thinking. From here, a vector is traced back to the romantic literary tradition, thus linking the posthumanist tendencies of William Blake, for example, to the romanticism of Jane Bennett and Ian Bogost. Pulling against the chains of language, these thinkers challenge the finitude of human being by developing discursive strategies that focus attention sideways, away from human subjectivity and toward the world of organic and inorganic things. The essay concludes with a description of “applied media theory,” a method developed by the Critical Media Lab to generate objects-to-think-with for the sake of posthumanist speculation.
Technology and Culture, 2005
At an event called Digifest 2004 in Toronto, I watched uneasily as the keynote speaker, the self-... more At an event called Digifest 2004 in Toronto, I watched uneasily as the keynote speaker, the self-proclaimed &quot;cyborg Luddite&quot; Steve Mann, delivered his talk while wearing eyeglasses that are a combination computer screen and projector. While Mann scanned his computer ...
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Papers by Marcel O'Gorman