*STS Circle at Harvard* *[image: line.gif] * * * *Ghislain Thibault* *History of Science, Harvard* * * on
*Communicating Electricity: A Media Archaeology of Wireless Power ** Transmission * ** Monday, April 4th 12:15-2:00 p.m. 124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100, Room 106 [image: line.gif] Lunch is provided if you RSVP. Please RSVP to sts <s...@hks.harvard.edu>@hks.harvard.edu<s...@hks.harvard.edu> by 5pm Thursday, March 31st. * * *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/ Follow us on Facebook: STS@Harvard <http://www.facebook.com/HarvardSTS> --------------------------------- 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
_______________________________________________ Sci-tech-public mailing list Sci-tech-public@mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/sci-tech-public
