The Andrew W. Mellon Digital Humanities Fellows at the University of Rochester are pleased to invite you to attend our second DigiTalk this semester. We host an interactive discussion with Jeffrey West Kirkwood, Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History and the Department of Cinema at Binghamton University.

Kirkwood's talk addresses a core shift in the relationship between meaning and value that has occurred in the transition from an industrial to an informational economy. It argues that Bitcoin is a paradigmatic technology for understanding the digital economy’s inversion of industrial era concepts and its invention of new forms of surplus. By exploring the proof-of-work system underlying Bitcoin, he will suggest that it is not simply an outlying case of energy wastage in an otherwise streamlined drive to informational efficiency. Rather, the talk will consider how it challenges the efficiency and optimization narrative at the heart of industrial capitalism, creating a horizon of negative consequences that have yet to be fully realized.

His talk titled “Encryption Capitalism,” will be on Friday, December 3, 2021 from 2:30 - 4:00 pm over Zoom. Please RSVP using this form by Thursday, December 2. The link to the event will be sent out in a reminder email on the 2nd.

The DigiTalks series features guest digital humanists in conversation about digital work in academia, public service, and industry.