Prof. Dr. Nathan Schneider (University of Colorado Boulder) and Dr. Johannes Bennke (Bar-Ilan University): Workshop on Protocols and Intellectual Landscapes of AI

• Datum: 30. September 2025
• Time: 10:00
• Street: Linzer Str. 4
• Location: Besprechungsraum

Abstract

Protocological Governance, Between Sovereignty and Entanglement: The key contribution is to a) rehabilitate the concept of protocol in media theory, recognizing it not just as a medium of control (Galloway 2004) but as an ambivalent form of governance. We have attempted to make some contributions to recognize how protocols can themselves be a source of sovereignty in and through their social entanglements. We also explore protocol on a more ontological level, including in their enactment through language and as a distinct epistemological lens.

Bio: Prof. Dr. Nathan Schneider

Nathan Schneider is an associate professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he leads the Media Economies Design Lab and the MA program in Media and Public Engagement. He is the author of four books, most recently Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life, published by University of California Press in 2024, and Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that Is Shaping the Next Economy, published by Bold Type Books in 2018. He edited Vitalik Buterin’s book Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains and co-edited Beautiful Solutions: A Toolbox for Liberation and Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet. Recent scholarship has been published in New Media & Society, Feminist Media Studies, the Georgetown Law Technology Review, and Media, Culture & Society, among other journals. He has also reported for publications including Harper’s, The Nation, The New Republic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and others, along with regular columns for America, a national Catholic magazine. He has lectured at universities including Columbia, Fordham, Harvard, MIT, NYU, the University of Bologna, and Yale. He serves on the boards of Metagov, Start.coop, and Waging Nonviolence. Follow his work on social media at @ntnsndr or at his website, nathanschneider.info.

Bio: Dr. Johannes Bennke

Johannes Bennke is a post-doc fellow at the Program for Hermeneutics & Cultural Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Before that he was a post-doc fellow of the Minerva Foundation of the Max-Planck-Society at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His current projects are concerned with the governance of future archives in decentralized networks, media of trust, epistemology of protocols, and the aesthetics of generativity. He received his doctorate from the Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany with a thesis on media philosophy and aesthetics according to Emmanuel Levinas. His research focuses on the philosophy of image and media, aesthetics, ethics and (post-)phenomenologies of digital practices. Since 2022 together with Markus Rautzenberg and Mirjam Schaub, he is co-speaker of the Media Philosophy Working Group of the Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft (GfM). Recent publications: Co-editor of navigationen, “Media Cultures of Value: Economy, Politics, and Art in Web3” (with M. Schaub; 2025), co-editor of Levinas und die Künste (with D. Mersch; transcript 2024); guest editor of communication +1, “Media of Verification” (2023); Obliteration. Für eine partikulare Medienphilosophie nach Emmanuel Levinas (transcript, 2023) and International Yearbook of Media Philosophy. Mediality/Theology/Religion (with V. Brower; de Gruyter, 2021).

There is no entry fee for this lecture, however to participate please register under christina.schober@vw.uni-bremen.de