Aula Massa, Agorà building (4° floor) - Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1, Milan
Also online - LINK
The lecture, conducted by Dr. Philipp Budka of the University of Vienna, revisits a reflection begun in 2011 on how anthropology can study rapidly changing technological worlds without fragmenting into new subfields. The author proposes “contemporary anthropology” as an approach capable of analysing emerging socio-technical formations while remaining anchored to ethnography, placing the concept of mediation at its centre.
To situate this perspective historically, the lecture draws on the dialogue between anthropology and cybernetics and the contributions of scholars such as Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, who conceived of communication and knowledge as relational processes and technologies as active mediators of social life.
These ideas are developed through an ethnographic case study based on long-term research with First Nations communities in north-western Ontario, focusing on the MyKnet.org platform, which was active between the 1990s and 2019. The platform shows how digital infrastructures support social relationships, memories and identities over time. From this perspective, artificial intelligence appears as an intensification of pre-existing cybernetic dynamics rather than a break with them, confirming the centrality of mediation in understanding contemporary transformations.
An event organized as part of the Permanent Seminar "Educational and Socio-Cultural Changes and Opportunities in the Digital Transition" by the CAPTED Research Center