Anderson Series Lecture by Professor of English Richard Doyle

February 22, 2007

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA –Penn State professor Richard Doyle will give a lecture titled “Just Say Yes to the Noösphere: Psychedelics and the Evolution of Information Technologies,” at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, February 28, in the first-floor jury space, Stuckeman Family Building. The lecture is sponsored by the Penn State School of Visual Arts’ John M. Anderson Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series and is free to the public.

The scientific use of psychedelics to promote technical innovations in industry yielded a suggestive body of literature and data. Looking to this research as well as evolutionary theories of mind, Doyle’s talk will offer an historical, evolutionary and ecological framework for comprehending and evaluating recent claims that psychedelics played an integral role in the emergence of breakthrough information technologies and the digital arts and practices that emerge in their wake.

Doyle, Penn State professor in English, science technology and society, and information science and technology, received a B.A. from Georgetown University and a M.A. and Ph.D. from University of California and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT. He has received a Liberal Arts Outstanding Teaching Award (1999) and an Atherton Teaching Award (2001).

Contact: Sarah Schwartz, ses32@psu.edu