Date: Wed, 13 Jan 93 21:09:00 -0600
From: cylinder@news.weeg.uiowa.edu (Cylinder)
Subject: File 4--ISPTS Organizing Information

The International Society for the Philosophy of Tools & Space

We are an interdisciplinary organization, small but growing,
dedicated
to thoughtful discussion about and research into issues concerning
tools and space.  Currently, we maintain a membership list and
circulate a short newsletter.  Our future plans call for expansion
- a
regular journal and a number of conferences are possible in the
coming
year.

Our membership list includes philosophers, artists, computer
programmers, scientists, graphic designers, architects, teachers -
as
well as those whose professions are still unnamed.  We are not a
school or a sect or party because we are not in agreement over
particular doctrines.  Our society is bound by an implicit faith in
the silent potency of tools, space, meaning and metaphor, in a wide
range of seemingly unrelated fields.  Within the scope of our talks
to
date, members have raised diverse and fascinating issues for
consideration:

-  A phenomenology of humor, tools and toys
-  Space and the banality of cause and effect
-  Rhetoric and metaphor: language as tool/toy
-  The iconology of computers
-  Speed and annihilation
-  Victimless crimes and crimes of trespass
-  The mechanics of the dreamwork in psycho-analysis
-  Architectural theory and practice
-  Political theories of reterritorialization
-  Viruses: information systems and genetic engineering
-  Media theory
-  Virtual Reality: the emergence of simulacra in social space
-  Transit technology and urban planning
-  Infrastructure catastrophes

The thematic study of tools and space forces us to reconsider and
sharpen the boundaries separating the various specialties of our
members.  Many of us are involved in concrete and ongoing projects
which undo customary lines of inquiry and uncover fruitful new
questions in what was formerly considered "obvious" and explained. 
We
seek to move beyond conventional genres without abandoning meaning
and
beauty for the sake of novelty.

For more information about Cylinder, including membership
materials,
please write us with your name and address.


CYLINDER
c/o Graham Harman, Secretary
Philosophy Dept., DePaul University
Chicago, IL  60614  USA
email: cylinder@uiowa.edu

(If you have already written to Cylinder, please refrain from doing
so
a second time.  Your name and address have been added to our
mailing
list and you should be expecting membership materials in the coming
months.)

Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253