see the program link above! 

This is the fourth of four Theorizing the Web keynote panels we are announcing ahead of posting the full schedule. See also Virality of Evil, Chill Theory, and Automated Personality.

Stories are one of our first technologies. They are a means of collective memory storage that propel ideas forward in time and outward to new communities. Stories not only tell us what has been, they also help us imagine what could be. On the web, the scope of that collective memory increases and the relationships among stories, their tellers, and audiences are redefined. A complex social life plays out on our little screens, refracting and feeding into the stories told on the big screen. How will compelling, timeless narratives be told through timelines, threads, and selfies, and videos? Are algorithms already our best authors and editors? Rather than focus solely on perennial questions about the always imminent death of media forms and institutions, this panel explores how the web changes the stories we tell and how we tell them.

This keynote panel happens during TtW on Saturday April 16th and features,

Alexandra Kleeman

Ales Kot

Laurie Penny

Jenna Wortham

Natasha Lennard

David A. Banks (moderator)

This is the third of four Theorizing the Web keynote panels we are announcing ahead of posting the full schedule. See also Virality of Evil and Chill Theory.

Having a personality is part of what allows us to understand what it is to be human, to be alive. What does it mean, then, to attribute a personality to a bot? What characteristics are used to flesh out a bot’s character, and how does this reproduce the social inequities that are already built in the way so many of these aspects are regarded socially? Personality is central to botmaking, but not only because some try to make them lifelike. Bots also rearticulate our sense of our own humanity, and they can address (or reproduce) our inhumanity to one another. Debates about artificial intelligence often focus on where “intelligence” begins, but perhaps the more difficult question to ask is what is “artificial.”

This keynote panel happens during TtW on Friday April 15th in the evening and features,

Judith Donath

Darius Kazemi

Kate Losse

Joanne McNeil

Dorothy Santos

Jenny Davis (moderator)

This is the second of four Theorizing the Web keynote panels we are announcing ahead of posting the full schedule. See also Virality of Evil.  

As technologies allow new ways to be intimate across time and space and through screens, intimacy itself changes. Far from precluding closeness, devices create an (over)abundance of opportunity for attention and connection. New ways of being close elicit new expectations of attentiveness, as well as new demands for being left alone. The mix of desire with digital convenience has spurred “chill,” both an affect of amiable indifference and a euphemism for casual sex. What does the rise of chill forebode for interpersonal relationships? How do the devices that we touch so frequently make us rethink the contours of intimacy both near and far?

This TtW keynote panel will be Friday April 15th in the evening and includes,

Faith Holland

Alana Massey

Eve Peyser

Dawn Shepherd

Rob Horning (moderator)

This is the first of four Theorizing the Web keynote panels we are announcing ahead of posting the full schedule.  

From ISIS beheadings to police shootings, from the violent clashes at political rallies currently happening to the live streamed mass shooting that could happen any day, images of death and hate rapidly spread across networks and onto our screens. With our feeds set to autoplay by default, traumatizing forced voyeurism may always await off the edge of the scroll. What drives the increasingly common choice to publish such images? Who gets to say they have seen enough? The social video’s relation to violence, hate, and death brings an urgent context to debates about journalism, policy, content moderation, metricized attention, and much else. This panel will address the virality of evil, and the implications and consequences of the exhibition of suffering on social media’s terms.

Join us for this keynote panel during Theorizing the Web in the evening of Saturday April 16th. On this panel,

Adrian Chen

Jade Davis

Ava Kofman

Zeynep Tufekci

Moira Weigel (panelist moderator)

http://www.movingimage.us/programs/2016/04/15/detail/theorizing-the-web-2016/

the Museum of the Moving Image have been so good to host us this year. and if you register for TtW *before April 15th* you get to see the whole museum that whole weekend of the event. so, register now: http://theorizingtheweb.tumblr.com/2016/registration

the #TtW16 abstract submission system is closed. we’re reviewing them now and will have decisions out in waves, from early to mid February. there are sooo many submissions – thank you! we’re excited to read them all <3

also, we’ll soon announce our invited keynote panels!!

~the most gentle of reminders~

We’re doing a sixth annual Theorizing the Web event, April 15 and 16, 2016 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NYC. (3 boroughs in 3 years)  

The Call for Papers is here. Please please share this with anyone you think would like to submit or attend.

Registration is, as always, pay what you want, min 1$. This year, you NEED to register before the event itself. 

Read more about the event here. Most simply, TtW is a DIY event run by a small volunteer committee. The event is public, accessible, concerned with social power and inequality, and highlights thoughtful, critical ideas about technology and society. “Theory” doesn’t mean “academic”; we equally value ideas from artists and activists and practitioners and writers and so on. Here are some photos from past events. 

We have invited panels and keynotes to announce shortly as well.

Thanks to the Museum of the Moving Image for hosting us this year. Thanks everyone for all the love these past 5 years and for helping us spread the word again <33

#TtW16