In this talk, I'd like to sketch some very preliminary ideas that I'm beginning to shape into a research program for the next few years. They revolve around the materiality of digital information. In the humanities and social sciences, the last few years have seen a rise in interest in "materiality" -- an examination of the nature and consequences of the material forms of objects of social and cultural import. There are many different things that one might mean when talking of the materiality of digital information -- everything from why iPods have a different cultural cache than Zunes (the domain of material culture) to how urban landscapes are reshaped by the material constraints of high-capacity network wiring or wireless access patterns (the domain of human geography). At the moment, my particular interest is in the consequences of the fact that information -- which we generally talk about as if it were ineffable and abstract -- is something that we encounter only ever in material form, and that our information practices (the things we know how to do, as information scientists) are inextricably entwined with these material forms, both substrates (media) and representations (conventional patterns).
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Location:	2150 Torgersen Hall
Sponsor:	Computer Science Department
Contact:	Steve Harrison srh@vt.edu 540 231 7783
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