My TEDx at Wuxi

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My talk at TEDxWuxi recorded in Dec 2012 in Wuxi, China. The thing was called Urban Organology and intended to show a snapshot of some research I am doing right now about tech, memes, urbanity and – organs.

in Chinese.

The more I am trying to understand the relationships between actual urban space and our social world online, the more I am confused by finding myself surrounded by disparate objects. Technological devices, Internet memes, fast-growing cities, air pollution, cultural memories : all those seem to be related in some discrete manner, though I have no real clue on how to unravel it.

Moreover when dealing with scientific research, I just don’t see how the different methodological and conceptual approaches at my disposal could honestly answer those questions. There is such a mess of meanings and structure out there, we may need some closer observations methods and thinking models to describe what is actually happening.

That is why I came up with this weird idea of Urban Organology: to anatomize the body to this global brain-in-a-vat that Internet has became today, the so-called “collective intelligence”. To read Stiegler, Deleuze, Leroi-Gourhan, hacker blogs, API documentations, social networks datasets and to live in huge Chinese cities made me think of this cheap sci-fi vision of our world as organs.

It has nothing innovative really and if you are focused on research deliveries and outcomes, this talk may not seem very consistent to you. Take it as an attempt to express some unfinished views on unstable objects. 

Plus, I will add that to express such thoughts in Chinese was quite challenging to me as well.

So, I am not so sure about the result but I had fun doing this TedX talk anyway :)