Opening Session

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Conference Session 66

Opening Session

17 August 2014 10:30 - 12:00 | Room: Amphithéâtre | SI

The session will include:

  • a welcome from Gérard Collomb, Mayor of Lyon and Bruno Racine, President of the National Library of France
  • the opening address from IFLA President Sinikka Sipilä
  • speeches from our guests of honour:
  • Our Keynote Speaker is the renowned philosopher Bernard Stiegler, who will give a speech concerning “The Future of Reading.”
  • and a special presentation of French national culture

Keynote Speaker: Bernard Stiegler

Bernard Stiegler is one of the leading French philosophers of our generation. He develops the work of Jacques Derrida, Gilbert Simondon and Andre Leroi-Gourhan in a wide-ranging analysis of our relationship with technology. Stiegler established himself in France in 1994 with the publication of the first volume of La Technique et Le Temps (‘Technics and Time’).

Bernard Stiegler

Throughout his life, Stiegler has published widely on the subjects of philosophy, technology, digitisation, and on the problem of individuation in consumer capitalism. Some of his most notable works include: two volumes of De La Misère Symbolique (‘Of Symbolic Misery’), three volumes of Mécréance et Discrédit (‘Disbelief and Discredit’) and two volumes Constituer l’Europe (‘Constituting Europe’). His 2009 publication Acting out is particularly well known.

Professor Stiegler has a long term engagement with the relation between technology and philosophy, not only in a theoretical sense, but also situating them in industry and society as practices. He is one of the founders (in 2005) of the political group Ars Industrialis based in Paris, which calls for an industrial politics of spirit, by exploring the possibilities of the technology of spirit, to bring forth a new “life of the mind”. Since 2013, Stiegler has also been a member of the Conseil national du numérique (CNNum—French Digital Council).

Bernard Stiegler is Director of the Institut de Recherche et d’Innovation (IRI), professor of philosophy at Université de Technologie de Compiègne and Professorial Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, and until 2009 was director of the Department of Cultural Development at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Last update: 28 July 2014