Welcome to Oslo! Greetings, Maja * CaTaC¹14: Culture, Technology, Communication: Celebration, Transformation, New Directions (Please distribute and cross-post as appropriate) Conference website: <http://www.catacconference.org/> On behalf of the Organizing Committee, we are very pleased to note that CaTaC¹14 will be enlivened and inspired by two keynote speakers: * Andrew Feenberg, Canada Research Chair in the Philosophy of Technology, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. Andrew is among the most significant and influential contemporary philosophers of technology. His work is rooted in Critical Theory and phenomenology, and emphasizes the critical requirements for democratic approaches to technology. * Judith Simon, Institute of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Austria; Institute for Technology Assessment, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany Judith's research focuses on epistemic dimensions of ICTs, and is rooted in STS and feminist philosophy. Her ideas on distributed epistemic responsibility in sociotechnical environments play an important role in the Onlife Manifesto, a project of the European Commission that seeks to foster more humane and sustainable technology development. CaTaC will take place from June 18-20, 2014 at the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo. There will be a doctoral colloquium on June 17. NB! June is a busy month for conferences and tourism in Oslo. We strongly urge potentially interested participants to explore the resource lists on the conference website of recommended accommodations and book as early as possible. Notifications of acceptance will be issued sufficiently early (March 28, 2014) so as to allow cost-free reservation cancellation if need be. Important Dates: Submission of papers (short or full), panel proposals: 16 February 2014 Notification of acceptance: 28 March 2014 Final formatted papers (for conference proceedings): 18 April 2014 Information regarding submission procedures will be available soon. Registration fees will be announced in early February. We look forward to welcoming you to Oslo next June! Charles Ess Maja van der Velden Conference co-chairs Conference Co-organizers: Charles Ess (Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo) Maja van der Velden (Department of Informatics, University of Oslo) Organizing Committee José Abdelnour-Nocera (School of Computing and Technology, University of West London) Herbert Hrachovec (Philosophy Department, University of Vienna) Leah Macfadyen (Evaluation and Learning Analytics, University of British Columbia) Patrizia Schettino (Communication Studies, Università della Svizzera italiana) Ylva Hård af Segerstad (Department of Applied Information Technology at the University of Gothenburg/Chalmers) Andra Siibak (Media Studies, University of Tartu) Michele M. Strano, Program Chair (Communication Studies, Bridgewater College) Satomi Sugiyama (Communication and Media Studies, Franklin College Switzerland)