“Events” in the Post-“Information” Age

Associate Professor Julia Sonnevend and Dr Bernard Geoghegan
The New School and Kings College London

Will the word information acquire new meanings under the pressure of technological transformations caused by the Covid-19 digital lockdown? How will people understand, define and experience major or minor events when they are limited to virtual encounters, online meetings and social media catch-ups? The webinar will interrogate old meanings and explore emerging connotations of what becomes information and whither the nature of an event in the seamless enfolding of the two in the online world.

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About the presenters

Associate Professor Julia Sonnevend
Associate Professor Julia Sonnevend

Julia Sonnevend is Associate Professor of Sociology and Communication at the New School for Social Research in New York. She is the author of Stories Without Borders: The Berlin Wall and the Making of a Global Iconic Event (Oxford University Press, 2016). Her research argues against the extensive rationalisation and disenchantment of communication studies in contemporary social life, to argue that people remain deeply influenced by stories, events, mythologies, totemic objects and magnetic personalities.

Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan
Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan

Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan from Kings College London is a writer, media theorist, and historian of science. His research explores how digital technology – as an ensemble of instruments, practices, inscriptions, and concepts – shapes science, culture, and the environment. His publications include articles on the emergence of the computer screen from geopolitical anxieties, the changing conditions of digital interactivity from Cold War vigilance to anthropocentric globalism, recent German media theory, the technological infrastructures of spiritualism, decolonial HCI, critical interface studies, and the ideology of smart cities.