Call for Proposals

The Digital Worlds Workshop
Online
April 19-21, 2024
https://digitalworldsworkshop.wordpress.com/

Extended abstracts submission deadline: January 15, 2024

The Center for Collaboration and Ethics at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley invites submissions for a virtual workshop to be conducted remotely on April 19-21 2024. We seek papers that interrogate the way modern digital technology enhances, hampers, or alters our experience of our lived worlds.

The distinction between “being on the internet” and “being in the real world” is eroding. People can increasingly be said to “live on their phones” or other devices. This workshop aims to interrogate the meaning and structure of the world and the self as mediated by such devices. This year, our theme is DIGTAL LACUNAE. We are especially interested in papers addressing under explored questions raised by new technologies. For instance, questions surrounding the security and privacy of our information are widely discussed. In what ways has this conversation become myopic? What lacunae are produced that remain to be explored? How might we reframe the issue to uncover new, and perhaps more important, issues? Or, people are talking a lot about the ethics of AI generated student papers. But less discussion surrounds the aesthetic value of AI generated work or the ways in which interacting with AI agents shapes our own writing and thinking.

We invite submissions on these and other themes from a variety of perspectives such as environmental philosophy, phenomenology, philosophy of technology, or social and political philosophy. We are particularly interested in new work.

The purpose of this workshop is to collaboratively develop works-in-progress with an eye toward publication. This is a pre-read workshop with each paper having a designated commenter to lead the conversation, rather than formal conference presentations. We invite extended abstract submissions of approximately 500 words by January 15th 2024. We also invite expressions of interest to be a commenter on a paper, independent of a submission (it is not necessary to submit a paper to provide commentary). The discussion draft of the papers will be required one month in advance of the meeting for everyone to pre-read and for commenters to review and prepare feedback.

Abstracts and any questions should be submitted to: digitalworldsworkshop@gmail.com

Further information, including programs from past workshops, can be found at  https://digitalworldsworkshop.wordpress.com/