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Dear all, A reminder that our speaker tomorrow at the UCL STS seminar series is Andrew Pickering from the University of Exeter. Please join us for what promises to be a fascinating talk. Here is his abstract: Sketches of Another Future: Cybernetics in Britain, 1940-2000 This talk aims to map out an important but little known branch of cybernetics as it developed in Britain from the 1940s to the present. Examples are drawn from the work of leading cyberneticians including Ross Ashby, Stafford Beer, Gordon Pask, Gregory Bateson and R D Laing in fields as diverse as brain science, psychiatry and antipsychiatry, adaptive robotics, biological computing drawing upon lively material such as ecosystems, management, the arts, entertainment and architecture, including connections to eastern spirituality and the 1960s counterculture. We can understand cybernetic projects and artefacts as ontological theatre-as staging and acting out for us a vision of the world radically different from that of modern science and western commonsense, and the talk seeks to explore the ontological politics of cybernetics, arguing that it aimed at an experimental openness to what the world has to offer us, rather than the grim modernist quest for domination and control-revealing rather than enframing, in Heidegger¨s terms. Tea and coffee will be available from 4pm, with the seminar beginning at 4:30, at the Garwood Lecture Theatre, UCL South Wing. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/sts-publication-events/2013_10_16_Seminar Forthcoming seminars, same time, same place 11th Dec Professor Brian Balmer, UCL STS ？ The early years of the biological weapons convention 22nd Jan Dr Sarah Edwards, UCL ？ The ethics of clinical research during a pandemic 5th Feb Dr Julie Anderson, University of Kent ？ Canes, Canines and Communication: Technological Aids for Blind People 1920-1950 12th Feb Professor Donald Mackenzie, University of Edinburgh ？ How Do High-Frequency Traders Make Their Money? Prediction, Shared Knowledge and Morals in Automated Trading 5th Mar Dr Jordan Goodman ？ Science and Diplomacy: Joseph Banks and the Macartney Embassy to China, 1792-4 19th Mar Dr Brendan Larvor, University of Hertfordshire ？ Who studies mathematical practice and why? Dr Jack Stilgoe, Department of Science and Technology Studies University College London Twitter: @jackstilgoe<http://twitter.com/jackstilgoe> Mobile no: 07870 212463 Have you heard about our two new MSc degrees? http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/prospective/msc/uclmastersdegrees