Explores how Deleuze's philosophy can help us to understand our digital and biotechnological futuresIn a world where our lives are increasingly mediated by technologies, we need to pay more attention to Deleuze's often explicit focus onour reliance on the machine and the technological. These essays are a collective and determined effort to explore the usefulness Deleuze in thinking about our present and future relianceon technology. At the same time, they take seriously a style of thinking that negotiates between philosophy, science (...) and art.ContributorsWilliam Bogard, Abigail Bray, Ian Buchanan, Verena Conley, Ian Cook, Tauel Harper, Timothy Murray, Saul Newman, Luciana Parisi, Patricia Pisters, Mark Poster, Horst Ruthrof, David Savat, Bent Meier Sorensen and Eugene Thacker.". (shrink)

One of the more dominant themes around the use of Deleuze and Guattari's work, including in this special issue, is a focus on the radical transformation that educational institutions are undergoing, and which applies to administrator, student and educator alike. This is a transformation that finds its expression through teaching analytics, transformative teaching, massive open online courses (MOOCs) and updateable performance metrics alike. These techniques and practices, as an expression of control society, constitute the new sorts of machines that frame (...) and inhabit our educational institutions. As Deleuze and Guattari's work posits, on some level these are precisely the machines that many people in their day-to-day work as educators, students and administrators assemble and maintain, that is, desire. The meta-model of schizoanalysis is ideally placed to analyse this profound shift that is occurring in society, felt closely in the so-called knowledge sector where a brave new world of continuous education and motivation is instituting itself. (shrink)