Ashley Woodward (University of Dundee)
4:30-6:00pm, Wednesday October 30
Dalhousie 2F15
All welcome!
The notion of information has had an uncomfortable place in the reception of Gilbert Simondon’s work. While clearly being central to his thought, many interpreters have largely ignored or side-lined it. In some of his last writings, Bernard Stiegler, one of Simondon’s most illustrious inheritors, directly attacked Simondon’s notion of information. This paper aims to unpack and address this criticism. The crux of Stiegler’s critique is that Simondon implies an idea of information independent of any support. According to Stiegler, the ultimate implication is that Simondon’s notion of information does not allow us to account for the inherent dangers of calculative information theory which have led to all the problems of contemporary computational capitalism. The paper offers a qualified defence of Simondon’s notion of information.
Ashley Woodward is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee. His research project Transforming Information excavates the history of philosophy of information in neglected traditions with an eye to contemporary problems.