Author: Matthew Lombard


  • Call: 2026 Philosophy of Human-Technology Relations Conference

    Call for Papers: 2026 Philosophy of Human-Technology Relations ConferenceTheme: The collective in the seemingly individual: Highlighting the world in human-technology relationsSeptember 21-23, 2026TU DelftThe Hague, the Netherlandshttps://www.aanmelder.nl/phtr26 Deadline for submission of abstracts: March 20, 2026 We are happy to invite you to the 4th international Philosophy of Human-Technology Relations (PHTR) conference, to be held in person at TU Delft’s Campus Spui in The Hague (the Netherlands), on September 21-23, 2026. This edition’s theme aims to highlight the collective dimension of seemingly individual human-technology relations. We invite submissions in different formats: individual paper presentations, design and multimedia contributions, panels, and interactive…

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  • Pokémon theme park opens in Tokyo, inviting fans into a real-world Kanto

    Pokémon theme park opens in Tokyo, inviting fans into a real-world Kanto

    [The opening of a new presence-evoking Pokémon theme park in Japan has generated considerable press coverage. This story from DesignTAXI describes it as “bringing the 8-bit landscapes of our childhood into the physical world”; see the original story (or YouTube) for a video trailer. An article in Variety says “PokéPark Kanto is a Pokémon fan’s wildest dream come to life. It’s almost like playing ‘Pokémon Go’ in real life, with hordes of new creatures to discover just a few steps away.” For more detailed information see IGN’s first-person report by a superfan that includes an eight minute video and Time…

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  • Call: artifices: technology, thought, art – 6th interdisciplinary Ereignis conference

    Call for Abstracts: artifices: technology, thought, art6th interdisciplinary Ereignis conferenceGdynia, Poland and onlineAugust 8-9, 2026https://www.ereignis.no/events/conference/2026http://commlist.org/archive/all/2026-all/msg00312.html Deadline for submissions: June 1, 2026 Our contemporary world is increasingly enamored by artificiality, yet the Artificial Intelligence moniker of the latest dot-com bubble triggers profound anxieties. The idea that we can create an artificial intelligence by way of machinic technology is by no means novel in the history of culture. In the Iliad, for example, Homer speaks of Hephaestus‘ “handmaidens wrought of gold in the semblance of living maids”, characteristic by their intelligence, speech and strength. To Aristotle, technê was a craft grounded in knowledge, and…

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  • A pop-up café in NYC let people go on dates with AI companions

    [For the two nights preceding Valentine’s Day, a café in New York City provided a space for romantic meals not with human dates but AI companions. This story from Newsweek is just one of many stories about the event; more details and insights follow in excerpts from coverage by The Verge and Wired. For more, see Vinyl & Velvet’s story via AOL and Gizmodo’s story “I went on a dinner date with an AI chatbot. Here’s how it went” and video news reports, both approximately four minutes long, from CNN and ABC’s Good Morning America. –Matthew] [Image: Phoebe Callas, 30,…

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  • Call: “The End: Finality and Renewal in Culture” 2026 Annual Lotman Days Conference

    Call for Papers: The End: Finality and Renewal in CultureThe 16th Annual Lotman Days ConferenceJune 10-12, 2026Tallinn UniversityTallinn, Estoniahttps://www.tlu.ee/en/lotman-days-conference2026 Deadline for submission of abstracts: February 28, 2026 (extended) “The end” is one of the most powerful and unsettling notions in culture. Human beings are endlessly fascinated by endings, whether of life, text, or civilisations, because they entail both the threat of general destruction and the possibility of rebirth where something completely new emerges in the place of the old. For the semiotician and cultural theorist Juri Lotman, this striving is inherent to human nature, arising from the desire to comprehend…

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  • Meta patents AI that takes over a dead person’s account to keep posting and chatting

    [The benefits and dangers of evoking a sense of the presence of people after they die is receiving new press coverage, prompted by the granting of a Meta patent application. The AOL version of a paywalled story from Business Insider is below, followed by additional details from coverage by Mashable, Cybernews and Dexerto. –Matthew] Death isn’t the end: Meta patented an AI that lets you keep posting from beyond the grave By Sydney BradleyFebruary 12, 2026 Does Meta want to make our social media accounts immortal? The company was granted a patent in late December that outlines how a large…

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  • Call: Besides the Screen Ningbo 2026: Audiences, Subjects & Agents

    Call for Papers: Besides the Screen Ningbo 2026: Audiences, Subjects & AgentsJune 4-6, 2026University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC)Ningbo, Zhejiang, Chinahttps://besidesthescreen.com/ Deadline for submissions: March 1, 2026 In 2026, the Besides the Screen conference returns to the city of Ningbo to explore the ways audiences, subjects and agents are distributed and negotiated across borders – whether institutional, spatial, linguistic or technological. This year’s conference begins from the premise that the concept of the passive media audience has always been a myth. Nowadays, it would be difficult to find a situation where viewers are not doing anything, even if it is just…

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  • Researchers utilize VR to address veterinary shortages

    [Researchers at Colorado State University are using presence-evoking virtual reality to teach undergraduate students about veterinary care to help address the shortage of people going into careers as veterinarians. This story is from The Rocky Mountain Collegian, where the original version includes a second image. See also the related June 2025 ISPR Presence News post “Training your farm workforce: Virtual reality (and presence) as an aid in livestock care.” –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Courtesy of Sangeeta Rao] Researchers utilize virtual reality to address veterinary shortages, receive USDA NIFA grant By Chloe Rios, Staff ReporterFebruary 4, 2026 In 2025, food animal veterinarians…

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  • Call: “Performing Conflict…” for the journal Remote Connections

    Call for Papers: “Performing Conflict. Theatre, Art, and Performative Media Forms in Wars and Protests”For the Artivism (Media Activism, Network as Art) section of an issue of the journal Connessioni remote (Remote Connections)https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/connessioniremote/announcement/view/1007 Deadline for submission of abstracts: March 10, 2026Deadline for submission of full papers: May 10, 2026 Contemporary wars, conflicts, and political protests exist in a condition that is increasingly inseparable from their representations. Current media and artistic ecosystems do not merely influence how these phenomena circulate but actively shape the very ways in which struggle is enacted. Performance is no longer simply a “medium” through which violence,…

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  • The power of sound in a virtual world

    [Below you’ll find the introduction to, and then a few excerpts from the transcript of, a 37:31 minute episode (EP184) of Business Lab, a podcast produced by MIT Technology Review’s Insights. The guests are from the company Shure and the Perception & Cognition Laboratory at Yale University and although they only refer to it indirectly, they discuss the importance of presence in communication via technology. You can learn more about the research they discuss, and listen to audio clips from the study, in the podcast episode or via the online article: Walter-Terrill, R., Ongchoco, J.D.K., & Scholl, B.J. (2025). Superficial…

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  • Call: ACM SAP 2026: ACM Symposium on Applied Perception

    Call for Papers: ACM Symposium on Applied Perception (ACM SAP)August 26-27, 2026Hosted by Inria Rennes, Francehttps://sap.acm.org/2026/ Deadline for abstract submission: April 21, 2026Deadline for paper submission: April 28, 2026 The ACM Symposium on Applied Perception (ACM SAP) provides an intimate forum for researchers who combine knowledge, methods, and insights from perception research and computer science disciplines. This includes such disciplines as cognitive psychology, perceptual psychology, psychophysics, behavior-analysis, and neuroscience on the perceptual side and computer graphics, computer vision, visualization, virtual reality and human-computer interfaces on the visual computing side. The interdisciplinary focus of this conference acknowledges that the various scientific…

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  • Researchers use AI to finetune robotic prosthesis, finding right balance between human and machine control

    [Researchers at the University of Utah’s John and Marcia Price College of Engineering are using artificial intelligence to take over some of the control of the movements of robotic arms and hands to make the experience more natural and intuitive (i.e., make it easier for those with prostheses to overlook the role of technology in their experience). The original version of this story includes two video demonstrations (which are also on YouTube here and here). For related news, see “How much can an autonomous robotic arm feel like part of the body” from Toyohashi University of Technology (TUT) via EurekAlert!…

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