Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan
Biographic Data
| ID | 235269 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bernard Dionysius |
| FAMILY NAME | Geoghegan |
| SIGNATURE | GEOGHEGAN B D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8228-1800 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 140 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Gift-Ai: The Cringe Test: student evaluations of intelligence with LLMs in a Turing Test adapted for classroom use
This article presents “The Cringe Test,” a classroom adaptation of the Turing Test (or imitation game) that stages dialogue with large language models (LLMs) in order to interrogate how culturally specific markers such as vocabulary, grammar, tacit knowledge, and contextual sensitivity shape judgments of intelligence in humans and machines. Implemented in an internationally oriented MA program in communications at the University of Gothenburg, th…
Why Grey Room
Photo falling—Word falling—Break through in grey room—Towers, open fireWhen Branden Joseph, Reinhold Martin, and Felicity Scott founded Grey Room twenty-five years ago, they borrowed its title from a passage in William S. Burroughs's novel The Ticket That Exploded (1962). As a new editorial group takes the helm, we revisit this foundational part of the journal's identity to think about what it means to “break through in grey room” today.Burroughs…
Techniques of the Nation: Mauss and the Political
A little more than ten years ago, Marcel Fournier and Jean Terrier, two scholars with long experience of Marcel Mauss's work, completed an annotated edition of La Nation, a book Mauss left unpublished and even unfinished during his lifetime.1 The present Grey Room dossier starts with the translation, by Jasmine C. Pisapia and Nicholas Elliott, of two excerpts of this volume, until now unavailable in English. Mauss's impact on the history of the h…
The Navigable Image: Vermeer, Melville, and the Maritime Coordinates of Computer Graphics
Technics: Media in the Digital Age
The Key Debates series was launched in 2010 with the aim of revisiting "the central issues that continue to animate thinking about film and audiovisual media," which we have now done across ten volumes.All of these have followed a pattern of reexamining foundational texts and issues, while also investigating new lines of transmission and interpretation.Our book series' dual interest in foundations and novel lines of inquiry is demonstrated by the…
The Digitally Disposed: Racial Capitalism and the Informatics of Value
The Bitmap is the Territory: How Digital Formats Render Global Positions
Digital rendering realizes a form of planetary addressability pervading screens and global GPS alike, by which a classical “scene of writing” is subsumed by a modern “scene of technical standards.” The rise of computer graphics from wartime mapping techniques and their development alongside techniques such as the global positioning system reflects an imperative to integrate vision, space, and computation around a contingent but non-fortuitous com…
Textocracy, or, the cybernetic logic of French theory
This article situates the emergence of cybernetic concepts in postwar French thought within a longer history of struggles surrounding the technocratic reform of French universities, including Marcel Mauss's failed efforts to establish a large-scale centre for social-scientific research with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the intellectual and administrative endeavours of Claude Lévi-Strauss during the 1940s and 1950s, and the rise of com…
An Ecology of Operations: Vigilance, Radar, and the Birth of the Computer Screen
This article examines the birth of interactive computer screens from enemy targeting and tracking systems (especially computerized radar) that distributed information processing in an ecology of operations among humans, computational instruments, and the environment. It proposes a concept of "computational screening" to account for the integration of visualization and information processing that gave rise to digital images
The Smartness Mandate: Notes toward a Critique
September 01 2017 The Smartness Mandate: Notes toward a Critique Orit Halpern, Orit Halpern Orit Halpern is Associate Professor in Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. She works on cybernetics, infrastructure, and the future of urban habitats. She is also a codirector of the Speculative Life Research Cluster, a laboratory situated at the intersection of art and the life sciences, architecture and design, and computational media (ww…
The Family as Machine: Film, Infrastructure, and Cybernetic Kinship in Suburban America
January 01 2017 The Family as Machine: Film, Infrastructure, and Cybernetic Kinship in Suburban America Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan, a historian and theorist of digital media, is a Senior Lecturer of Media and Communications at Coventry University. He also works as a curator for the Anthropocene Project at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. He may be reached online at www.bernardg.com. Search for o…
Cybernetics
Cybernetics, a science of “communication and control” devised in the years after World War II, is often identified with communication engineering and computing. In fact, it sprang from a wide array of intellectual sources and in the 1950s and 1960s it impacted an even wider array of disciplinary quarters. This entry reviews a few of its multiple engagements, with particular emphasis on the afterlife of cybernetic concepts in the human sciences. S…
L évi‐ S trauss, C laude
Claude Lévi‐Strauss played a decisive role in internationalizing “communications” as a topic of transdisciplinary research in the 1950s and 1960s. His writings relayed concepts among communities of American and French academics, as well as among natural scientists, engineers, and social scientists. His reinterpretation of engineering in the perspective of cybernetics and information theory established premises that informed a generation of debate…
Friedrich A. Kittler, Professor
Farewell to Sophienstraße
Mind the Gap: Spiritualism and the Infrastructural Uncanny
The Spirit of Media: An Introduction
Toward Liberal Histories of Computing: Fred Turner, The Democratic Surround
Toward Liberal Histories of ComputingFred Turner, The Democratic Surround Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan (bio) From John von Neumann to Donna Haraway, the circumstances of wartime mobilization and the prospects of open-ended military conflict framed initial speculations about computers and their epistemic prospects.1 In the 1990s the tapering off of the cold war funding alongside the exponential growth of private investment in computer innovation in…
In Memoriam: Friedrich A. Kittler, 1943–2011
After Kittler: On the Cultural Techniques of Recent German Media Theory
This paper offers a brief introduction and interpretation of recent research on cultural techniques (or Kulturtechnikforschung) in German media studies. The analysis considers three sites of conceptual dislocations that have shaped the development and legacy of media research often associated with theorist Friedrich Kittler: first, the displacement of 1980s and 1990s Kittlerian media theory towards a more praxeological style of analysis in the ea…
Introduction: Catching Up With Simondon
IntroductionCatching Up With Simondon Mark Hayward (bio) and Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan (bio) As a young philosopher Gilbert Simondon identified technology as a site of obsession, anxiety, and misunderstanding within contemporary culture. “Culture,” he wrote, “has become a system of defense designed to safeguard man from technics” (Mode of Existence, 1). According to Simondon, technique and technology ubiquitously structured thought and practice…
La cybernétique ' américaine ' au sein du structuralisme ' français: Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss et la Fondation Rockefeller
À partir de la lecture des archives de correspondances, archives institutionnelles et travaux publiés, cet article reconstruit la convergence des sujets d'intérêt de la Fondation Rockefeller, de Roman Jakobson et de Claude Lévi-Strauss autour de la cybernétique entre les années 1940 et 1950. Le soutien de la Fondation pour ces deux chercheurs a contribué à la formation d'une synthèse partielle de la cybernétique et de son intégration dans les con…
From Information Theory to French Theory: Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss, and the Cybernetic Apparatus
From Information Theory to French Theory: Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss, and the Cybernetic Apparatus
After Kittler: On the Cultural Techniques of Recent German Media Theory
This paper offers a brief introduction and interpretation of recent research on cultural techniques (or Kulturtechnikforschung) in German media studies. The analysis considers three sites of conceptual dislocations that have shaped the development and legacy of media research often associated with theorist Friedrich Kittler: first, the displacement of 1980s and 1990s Kittlerian media theory towards a more praxeological style of analysis in the ea…
The Smartness Mandate: Notes toward a Critique
September 01 2017 The Smartness Mandate: Notes toward a Critique Orit Halpern, Orit Halpern Orit Halpern is Associate Professor in Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. She works on cybernetics, infrastructure, and the future of urban habitats. She is also a codirector of the Speculative Life Research Cluster, a laboratory situated at the intersection of art and the life sciences, architecture and design, and computational media (ww…
The Family as Machine: Film, Infrastructure, and Cybernetic Kinship in Suburban America
January 01 2017 The Family as Machine: Film, Infrastructure, and Cybernetic Kinship in Suburban America Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan, a historian and theorist of digital media, is a Senior Lecturer of Media and Communications at Coventry University. He also works as a curator for the Anthropocene Project at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. He may be reached online at www.bernardg.com. Search for o…
Mind the Gap: Spiritualism and the Infrastructural Uncanny
An Ecology of Operations: Vigilance, Radar, and the Birth of the Computer Screen
This article examines the birth of interactive computer screens from enemy targeting and tracking systems (especially computerized radar) that distributed information processing in an ecology of operations among humans, computational instruments, and the environment. It proposes a concept of "computational screening" to account for the integration of visualization and information processing that gave rise to digital images
Textocracy, or, the cybernetic logic of French theory
This article situates the emergence of cybernetic concepts in postwar French thought within a longer history of struggles surrounding the technocratic reform of French universities, including Marcel Mauss's failed efforts to establish a large-scale centre for social-scientific research with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the intellectual and administrative endeavours of Claude Lévi-Strauss during the 1940s and 1950s, and the rise of com…
L évi‐ S trauss, C laude
Claude Lévi‐Strauss played a decisive role in internationalizing “communications” as a topic of transdisciplinary research in the 1950s and 1960s. His writings relayed concepts among communities of American and French academics, as well as among natural scientists, engineers, and social scientists. His reinterpretation of engineering in the perspective of cybernetics and information theory established premises that informed a generation of debate…
Farewell to Sophienstraße
Introduction: Catching Up With Simondon
IntroductionCatching Up With Simondon Mark Hayward (bio) and Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan (bio) As a young philosopher Gilbert Simondon identified technology as a site of obsession, anxiety, and misunderstanding within contemporary culture. “Culture,” he wrote, “has become a system of defense designed to safeguard man from technics” (Mode of Existence, 1). According to Simondon, technique and technology ubiquitously structured thought and practice…
The Bitmap is the Territory: How Digital Formats Render Global Positions
Digital rendering realizes a form of planetary addressability pervading screens and global GPS alike, by which a classical “scene of writing” is subsumed by a modern “scene of technical standards.” The rise of computer graphics from wartime mapping techniques and their development alongside techniques such as the global positioning system reflects an imperative to integrate vision, space, and computation around a contingent but non-fortuitous com…
The Spirit of Media: An Introduction
In Memoriam: Friedrich A. Kittler, 1943–2011
La cybernétique ' américaine ' au sein du structuralisme ' français: Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss et la Fondation Rockefeller
À partir de la lecture des archives de correspondances, archives institutionnelles et travaux publiés, cet article reconstruit la convergence des sujets d'intérêt de la Fondation Rockefeller, de Roman Jakobson et de Claude Lévi-Strauss autour de la cybernétique entre les années 1940 et 1950. Le soutien de la Fondation pour ces deux chercheurs a contribué à la formation d'une synthèse partielle de la cybernétique et de son intégration dans les con…
From Information Theory to French Theory: Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss, and the Cybernetic Apparatus
Introduction: Catching Up With Simondon
IntroductionCatching Up With Simondon Mark Hayward (bio) and Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan (bio) As a young philosopher Gilbert Simondon identified technology as a site of obsession, anxiety, and misunderstanding within contemporary culture. “Culture,” he wrote, “has become a system of defense designed to safeguard man from technics” (Mode of Existence, 1). According to Simondon, technique and technology ubiquitously structured thought and practice…
La cybernétique ' américaine ' au sein du structuralisme ' français: Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss et la Fondation Rockefeller
À partir de la lecture des archives de correspondances, archives institutionnelles et travaux publiés, cet article reconstruit la convergence des sujets d'intérêt de la Fondation Rockefeller, de Roman Jakobson et de Claude Lévi-Strauss autour de la cybernétique entre les années 1940 et 1950. Le soutien de la Fondation pour ces deux chercheurs a contribué à la formation d'une synthèse partielle de la cybernétique et de son intégration dans les con…
After Kittler: On the Cultural Techniques of Recent German Media Theory
This paper offers a brief introduction and interpretation of recent research on cultural techniques (or Kulturtechnikforschung) in German media studies. The analysis considers three sites of conceptual dislocations that have shaped the development and legacy of media research often associated with theorist Friedrich Kittler: first, the displacement of 1980s and 1990s Kittlerian media theory towards a more praxeological style of analysis in the ea…
In Memoriam: Friedrich A. Kittler, 1943–2011
Toward Liberal Histories of Computing: Fred Turner, The Democratic Surround
Toward Liberal Histories of ComputingFred Turner, The Democratic Surround Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan (bio) From John von Neumann to Donna Haraway, the circumstances of wartime mobilization and the prospects of open-ended military conflict framed initial speculations about computers and their epistemic prospects.1 In the 1990s the tapering off of the cold war funding alongside the exponential growth of private investment in computer innovation in…
Cybernetics
Cybernetics, a science of “communication and control” devised in the years after World War II, is often identified with communication engineering and computing. In fact, it sprang from a wide array of intellectual sources and in the 1950s and 1960s it impacted an even wider array of disciplinary quarters. This entry reviews a few of its multiple engagements, with particular emphasis on the afterlife of cybernetic concepts in the human sciences. S…
L évi‐ S trauss, C laude
Claude Lévi‐Strauss played a decisive role in internationalizing “communications” as a topic of transdisciplinary research in the 1950s and 1960s. His writings relayed concepts among communities of American and French academics, as well as among natural scientists, engineers, and social scientists. His reinterpretation of engineering in the perspective of cybernetics and information theory established premises that informed a generation of debate…
Friedrich A. Kittler, Professor
Farewell to Sophienstraße
Mind the Gap: Spiritualism and the Infrastructural Uncanny
The Spirit of Media: An Introduction
The Smartness Mandate: Notes toward a Critique
September 01 2017 The Smartness Mandate: Notes toward a Critique Orit Halpern, Orit Halpern Orit Halpern is Associate Professor in Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. She works on cybernetics, infrastructure, and the future of urban habitats. She is also a codirector of the Speculative Life Research Cluster, a laboratory situated at the intersection of art and the life sciences, architecture and design, and computational media (ww…
The Family as Machine: Film, Infrastructure, and Cybernetic Kinship in Suburban America
January 01 2017 The Family as Machine: Film, Infrastructure, and Cybernetic Kinship in Suburban America Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan, a historian and theorist of digital media, is a Senior Lecturer of Media and Communications at Coventry University. He also works as a curator for the Anthropocene Project at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. He may be reached online at www.bernardg.com. Search for o…
An Ecology of Operations: Vigilance, Radar, and the Birth of the Computer Screen
This article examines the birth of interactive computer screens from enemy targeting and tracking systems (especially computerized radar) that distributed information processing in an ecology of operations among humans, computational instruments, and the environment. It proposes a concept of "computational screening" to account for the integration of visualization and information processing that gave rise to digital images
Textocracy, or, the cybernetic logic of French theory
This article situates the emergence of cybernetic concepts in postwar French thought within a longer history of struggles surrounding the technocratic reform of French universities, including Marcel Mauss's failed efforts to establish a large-scale centre for social-scientific research with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the intellectual and administrative endeavours of Claude Lévi-Strauss during the 1940s and 1950s, and the rise of com…
The Bitmap is the Territory: How Digital Formats Render Global Positions
Digital rendering realizes a form of planetary addressability pervading screens and global GPS alike, by which a classical “scene of writing” is subsumed by a modern “scene of technical standards.” The rise of computer graphics from wartime mapping techniques and their development alongside techniques such as the global positioning system reflects an imperative to integrate vision, space, and computation around a contingent but non-fortuitous com…
The Digitally Disposed: Racial Capitalism and the Informatics of Value
Technics: Media in the Digital Age
The Key Debates series was launched in 2010 with the aim of revisiting "the central issues that continue to animate thinking about film and audiovisual media," which we have now done across ten volumes.All of these have followed a pattern of reexamining foundational texts and issues, while also investigating new lines of transmission and interpretation.Our book series' dual interest in foundations and novel lines of inquiry is demonstrated by the…
The Navigable Image: Vermeer, Melville, and the Maritime Coordinates of Computer Graphics
Gift-Ai: The Cringe Test: student evaluations of intelligence with LLMs in a Turing Test adapted for classroom use
This article presents “The Cringe Test,” a classroom adaptation of the Turing Test (or imitation game) that stages dialogue with large language models (LLMs) in order to interrogate how culturally specific markers such as vocabulary, grammar, tacit knowledge, and contextual sensitivity shape judgments of intelligence in humans and machines. Implemented in an internationally oriented MA program in communications at the University of Gothenburg, th…
Why Grey Room
Photo falling—Word falling—Break through in grey room—Towers, open fireWhen Branden Joseph, Reinhold Martin, and Felicity Scott founded Grey Room twenty-five years ago, they borrowed its title from a passage in William S. Burroughs's novel The Ticket That Exploded (1962). As a new editorial group takes the helm, we revisit this foundational part of the journal's identity to think about what it means to “break through in grey room” today.Burroughs…
Techniques of the Nation: Mauss and the Political
A little more than ten years ago, Marcel Fournier and Jean Terrier, two scholars with long experience of Marcel Mauss's work, completed an annotated edition of La Nation, a book Mauss left unpublished and even unfinished during his lifetime.1 The present Grey Room dossier starts with the translation, by Jasmine C. Pisapia and Nicholas Elliott, of two excerpts of this volume, until now unavailable in English. Mauss's impact on the history of the h…
Computer Science (9 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Download (7 works) · Cybernetics and Technology in Society (6 works) · Media studies (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · World Wide Web (5 works)