| Description: |
Presently (re-)shaping social life as well as economics and science, the effects of globalization are in their turn – and in manifold ways – related to and in fact highly dependent on technology. The first International Conference of the DFG-Research Group "Topologies of Technology" seeks to explore in greater detail and from a deliberately interdisciplinary angle the role(s) and function(s) of world-embracing information and communication technologies, transport and computing facilities in the global age. In particular, the plenary discussions and five interdisciplinary streams attempt to clarify how newly developed technologies contribute to and assist the currently observable developments in the particular field of engineering and, more generally, in labor distribution and organization, how they influence the re-definition of "the local" against the backdrop of "the global," and in which novel ways they enable mobility (and require new modes of managing these). In addition, space will be given to collateral effects of both globalization and technologies at large such as world-wide efforts of controlling and improving body movement(s), e.g. for the target group of old-age people, in sport science/kinesiology and perceptual computing, and to historical considerations aiming at the disclosure of precursors of technology-enhanced globalizing tendencies. |