STS
Circle at Harvard
Lisa Messeri
Assistant
Professor, Anthropology
Yale
"Technological Terroir:
Tracing the Cultivation of
'Tech' in Los Angeles"
12:15-1:30 pm
Monday, Apr. 5, 2021
Virtual via Zoom
Please register on Zoom
here.
Abstract:
Technology is a product of its
local circumstances – both
spatially and temporally.
Classic STS studies have many
times over dispelled the notion
that technology is universal in
the ways its boosters often
claim. This talk seeks to think
through the implications of the
local, not only in shaping a
specific technology but also in
shaping the very meaning of
“tech.” Based on ethnographic
fieldwork in Los Angeles with
the virtual reality community, I
suggest that in this city
dominated by Hollywood there is
the possibility of telling a
different story about tech. Here
on Silicon Beach, who gets to be
“in” tech and who tech is for
are not givens and indeed
actively contested. I follow the
“women in tech” community –
specifically those who are VR
innovators – to illustrate the
local circumstances and
conversations that elevate a
different kind of expertise when
it comes to qualifying who is
and isn’t in tech.
Bio:
Lisa Messeri is an
Assistant Professor of
sociocultural anthropology at
Yale University. She is the
author of Placing Outer Space:
An Earthly Ethnography of
Other Worlds. Her research has
been featured in CNN, The Wall
Street Journal, National
Geographic, PBS’s Nova Next,
and Wired. Her current book,
under contract at Duke
University Press and
tentatively titled “In the
Land of the Unreal: Silicon
Beach and the Fantasy of
Virtual Reality,” explores the
nested fantasies that shape
the current VR boom. This
research was funded by an NSF
Scholars Award. Messeri
received her Ph.D. from MIT’s
program in History,
Anthropology, and Science,
Technology and Society.
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