Beyond "Always On" Culture
February 13, 2025
Technology Humanities Speaker Series
Start time: 4:00 p.m.
End time: 6:00 p.m
Location: The ICA at VCU (601 W Broad St, Richmond, VA 23220)
Description
There may be no phrase more indicative of contemporary digitality than “always on”; phone always on hand, activity tracker always on the wrist and, perhaps soon, augmented reality glasses always on our faces and artificially intelligent agents always on call. “Always on” culture is symptomatic of technoliberalism, or the computational intensification of neoliberalism's predilection for individualism and market logics. “Beyond Always On Culture” tracks technoliberalism through the twinned discourses surrounding wearables and AI, from Fitbits to Apple Vision Pro to ChatGPT and beyond. This talk diagnoses the technoliberal temper of digitality, but also reflects humanistic imaginings otherwise by offering three avenues that may lead beyond always on culture: remetaphorizing our data relations away from extractivism, engaging alternative cultural traditions of technicity, and embracing intermittence as a resistant political practice.
About the Speakers
Damien Smith Pfister, PhD is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland, College Park, Director of the Design Cultures + Creativity program, and co-editor of the University of Alabama book series “Rhetoric + Digitality.” In these different roles, Pfister reimagines the humanities with technology at the center while challenging the tech industry with humanistic insight. His research examines the ongoing reception of ancient rhetorics in digital culture, the relationship between rhetorical theory and digital media studies, and the role of technology in the history of rhetoric. He is the author of Networked Media, Networked Rhetorics: Attention and Deliberation in the Early Blogosphere (Penn State, 2014) and co-editor of Ancient Rhetorics + Digital Networks (Alabama, 2018). Recent essays can be found in the Journal for the History of Rhetoric, the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication and the Public, and Philosophy & Rhetoric.
Caddie Alford, PhD is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is the author of the book Entitled Opinions: Doxa After Digitality (2024), published out of University of Alabama Press’ “Rhetoric + Digitality” series. She is a digital rhetoric expert who researches emergent forms of persuasion, sociality, and the changing state of information. Some of her work has appeared in The Quarterly Journal of Speech; Rhetoric Review; and Enculturation. She served as the book review editor for the journal Enculturation for three years. She is currently co-editing a rhetorical studies collection on “post-truth” rhetorics.