[Sci-tech-public] April 4th - Ghislain Thibault - (Please RSVP)

[Harvard STS]

*STS Circle at Harvard*
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*Ghislain Thibault*
*History of Science, Harvard*
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*Communicating Electricity: A Media Archaeology of Wireless Power **
Transmission *
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Monday, April 4th
12:15-2:00 p.m.
124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100, Room 106

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Lunch is provided if you RSVP.
Please RSVP to sts <sts at hks.harvard.edu>@hks.harvard.edu<sts at hks.harvard.edu>
 by 5pm Thursday, March 31st.

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*Abstract:* In 2007, a team of MIT physicists succeeded in powering a light
bulb without wire over a distance of seven feet. Their innovation – coined
“WiTricity”– was described by Technological Review as one of the ten
technologies most likely to change the way we live. In 2010, the first
wirelessly powered plasma TV was exhibited at the Consumer Electronics Show.
As our everyday technological devices are on the verge of becoming utterly
wireless, my research explores how models of electricity distribution and
information transmission have been shaping one another in the late 19th
century onwards and how wireless power transfer challenges our relation to
space, mobility and transmission. Building on the emerging research field
of media archaeology, I argue that these cross-overs between energy and
information have been productive forces in shaping the contemporary media
ecology and that “wirelessness” reveals common features of both paradigms.
My analysis focuses on two case studies: the Tesla experiments (1895-1905)
and the MIT experiments (2000-2011).


*Biography*: Ghislain Thibault is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the
Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. He was recently
appointed Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier
University (Canada), beginning July 2011. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication
Studies from the University of Montreal where he was a member of the
Radical Empiricism Laboratory. From 2009-2010, he was the editor of *
COMMposite*, an electronic journal for young scholars in communication
studies. His research and teaching interests include media archaeology,
media theory and the history of technology. His work was published
in*Intermedialities: History and Theory of the Arts, Literature and
Technologies* and in the *Canadian Journal of Communication*.

 A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our
website:
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/
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---------------------------------
Samuel A. Evans, DPhil
Postdoctoral Fellow
& Chair of the STS Circle
Harvard University

Program on Science, Technology, & Society
Kennedy School of Government

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts
+1 (617) 496-0807
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