Dr. D.E. Wittkower of the Philosophy & Religious Studies Department at ODU will present Teh Interwebs: Maed of Cats Akshully at the Friends of the ODU Library Fall Lecture Series on Friday, November 6, 2015 at 7:00 PM in the Learning Commons at Perry Library.
In his Reddit AMA, Tim Berners-Lee, often called the inventor of the WWW, was asked what was one of major uses of the WWW that he did expect to come to define the web, he responded "Kittens. I never expected all these cats." While it is a truism that "the internet is made of cats," the role of online cats and their derivatives, featuring other animals, remains seriously understudied.
In this presentation, we will look across the variety of kinds of cat-based internet communications-cute animal pictures; lolcats and lolspeak; viral cat trends, such as breading; internet cat celebrities, such as Maru and Grumpy Cat; cat gifs; and even non-feline 'internet cats' like Boo and the Lolrus.
Dr. Wittkower seeks to articulate what "cats" are insofar as the internet is made of them by looking at cats both as content and as medium in viral and memetic communications, offering multiple and non-exclusive suggestions about why there are "all these cats."
D.E. Wittkower is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Old Dominion University, where he teaches on philosophy of technology, philosophy of social media, and on information literacy and digital culture. In addition to being editor or author of six books on philosophy for a general audience, he is author or coauthor of thirty-two book chapters and journal articles, in publications including First Monday, Techné, International Review of Information Ethics, and Social Identities. He also writes periodically for Slate and for Speakeasy, the culture blog of the Wall Street Journal.
Join us at 7:00 PM in the Learning Commons at Perry Library on Friday, November 6 for what is to be a lively and fun conversation!
FREE PARKING will be available in Parking Garage B, Levels 3 and 4.
(Directions: Turn west on 43rd Street; turn right into Parking Garage B, just past Perry Library)
For additional information please email LibraryEvents@odu.edu
The event is free & open to the public!