Overcoming Bias

New blog by the FHI at Oxford.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/

British Council Cafe Scientifique (20 November, 2006)

Yesterday, I spoke for the British Council Cafe Scientifique which used a video conference system to link up with Jordan and Palestine. The focus of our conversations was human enhancement technologies in sport and we had extensive discussions about how to deal with the problem of doping. Students, teachers and journalists took part in the debate and linking up with two different places was quite straightforward. Clips of the discussion should be posted on the BC website shortly.

Liverpool Capital of Culture 2008 highlights event

Last night’s Capital of Culture Preview event. We even tried Scouse! I’m not so sure that this eevnt engaged the interest of the national press (neither am I sure that it needed to or should have), but it was probably a necessary event to establish 2008 as a tangible prospect for the city’s inhabitants. The event itself was all about representations, but not particularly obvious narratives – eg. the Beatles behind jail bars and a lone busker in what felt like a subway tunnel. The proceedings did not establish any kind of hierarchy, there were none of the typically dull speeches from VIPs. Instead, the main speeches consisted of two Liverpudlians speaking about their place in the city and, importantly, the place for newcomers. Actress Sunetra Sarker talked about her experience of the city as an asian woman working in the entertainment business and a poet whose name I do not yet know spoke clearly about Liverpool’s hard and soft edges.

I wonder what those critics of the CoC will say about this event. It seems all too easy to moan about what more cities should be doing, but there’s got to be a space somewhere for celebration. I try to think of all the people who were at this event who have an interest to see Liverpool prosper and appreciated for what it already has. Events like last night are a necessary part of that overcoming of history, but it would be sociologically naive to describe them as lacking in integrity. For me, such events are suitably analogised with Olympic opening ceremonies where great expectations must be tempered by a recognition that doing anything at all is already hard work.

In September, we happened to pass the opening of this exhibit in the Biennial, just as the artist was finishing up. This was the exhibit, which I saw in the next day newspaper:

He didn’t introduce himself as the artist at first, suggesting he was the security guard for the venue, but he later availed himself. I found myself immediately warming to the exhibit and pleased to see this kind of work presented here. It helped me believe that the city is innovating with artistic and creative enterprise. And the Biennial is not alone here. FACT is doing a great job and I spent most of my first 3 months in the city around the FACT cafe.

However, later that week, I was walking passed the same venue and overheard a middle-aged Liverpudlian walk out of the venue and say ‘I thought we had more important things to spend our money on’. After a brief smirk, I thought a little more deeply about this problem of divisions that emerges around any form of aesthetic moment. I’m not sure I can work through a solution here, but it struck me that the city’s biggest challenge is in aspiring to world class status while accommodating the very local expectations which struggle to give value to aspiring such a status until they see Liverpool’s ‘culture’ mentioned on Richard and Judy [who, of course, also used to hang around these parts!]. I don’t mean to stratify taste – I know the most wealthy and learned of people who don’t see the value of conceptual, abstract or contemporary art – which is why the solution lies not in something class based – not in something sociological – but in cultivating non-instrumental sensitivities.

Robin Downie, Carl Elliott, Francis Fukuyama & the Hastings Center

I’m currently writing a chapter for Ruth Chadwick and Bert Gordijn on the history of posthumanism and while going through my archives I discovered this brief review of Fukuyama’s ‘Our Posthuman Future’. It is published in The Hastings Center Report and I felt like writing something about it. Actually, it made me think about putting together a ‘Coincidences’ category here.

Anyway, so here are the coincidences:

1. Robin Downie is Profesor Emeritus at Glasgow Uni where I have just completed an MPhil in Medical Law and Ethics.
2. I met Robin when I first moved to Glasgow and was put in touch with him by Carl Elliott, author of this article. I met Carl in 1999 at a meeting of his Enhancement Technologies Group at UCL.
3. In this article, Carl is reviewing Francis Fukuyama’s book. I developed a communication with Fukuyama in 2004, around the time of publishing Genetically Modified Athletes, since in The Economist’s Year in 2003, he published a piece on GMAs.
4. In 2002, I was based at the Hastings Center as an International Visiting Scholar. During this period, I met Tom Murray, President of the Center and author of the Foreword for my book.

Free Thinking: A Festival of ideas for the future

 

This morning, Beatriz and I strolled down to the BBC Radio3 Free Thinking festival taking place at FACT. Two of our friends – Jude Kelly and Nick Bostrom – were presenting at the same time though in different rooms, so we split up and re-grouped afterwards, taking in lunch with the ‘robotic’ panel afterwards. This also included Fiona Coyle from CeSAGen at Cardiff Uni and it was good to meet her as I know some of her colleagues quite well. She also injected some much-needed critical theory into the posthuman debate. Dylan Evans was articulating the ‘hang on a second’ perspective and told me about his very interesting ‘utopia experiment’ project in Scotland, where he has just moved. It was a good chance to see FACT at full-speed and the debate I saw was well-attended, especially for a Sunday morning! Artist Neil Harbisson was present with inventor of his Eyeborg Adam Montandon. Coincidentally, I had seen Neil before at the Bankside Gallery in London, where he was performing at the Sense and Sensuality exhibition.

Neuroscience and Society Network

A year or so back, I was in touch with Linsey McGoey about this new network, but have struggled to involve myself due mainly to logistics! However, now I’m a little closer to London, perhaps I’ll get a chance to do something to support its work.

Project Biocultures

I can’t remember whether it was an interest in Marquard Smith or Nikolas Rose that led me to the Project Biocultures website. In any case, the collaborative network is worth checking out: http://www.biocultures.org

BioSocieties

This is really a follow-up from a July posting on BioSocieties. I’ve now had a bit more of a chance to read the work it’s publishing. This new journal from Cambridge looks fantastic. Over the last four years, I developed a syllabus at Glasgow University on ethics in the biosciences and this journal, along with the Programme developed by Julian Savulescu at Oxford is really making an important contribution to this kind of work. Nikolas Rose at the LSE is Editor for this journal, along with Ilina Singh and Anne Harrington. The BIOS project at the LSE is doing some really crucial work bringing philosophical and social studies of emerging technologies together. BioSocieties first appeared in March 2006 and is surely destined to become a crucial publishing space for inter-disciplinary work.

The stairs of TATE Liverpool

While my experience of the Biennial in Liverpool this year has been reasonably limited, I did manage to get along to the Tate to see what they are doing. It’s such a lovely venue.