The Smartness Mandate: Notes toward a Critique

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 (www.speculativelife.com). Her website is www.orithalpern.net.

Robert Mitchell is the Marcello Lotti Professor of English and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory at Duke University. His books include Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism, with Catherine Waldby (Duke University Press, 2006) and, most recently, Experimental Life: Vitalism in Romantic Science and Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).

Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan is a media historian whose work examines the constitution of digital media as hybrid ensembles of techniques, instruments, and inscription systems. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London and also holds supplementary appointments as a Visiting Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Yale University and as a curator at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. His website is www.bernardg.com.