The first presentation about my current British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship project, 'Understanding Digital Events'

1. INFOMATERIALITY:
BERGSON, WHITEHEAD AND DIGITAL
EXPERIENCE AMONGST THE OVER 65S AND THE
UNDER 25S
Photo: Northumberland National Park, NE England

2. PROJECT
• British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship : 1.1.18 - 31.12.18
• “Understanding Digital Events: A philosophical and sociological study
of virtual experience in the everyday”
A. Sociological research
B. Colloquium - essay collection
C. Monograph
• www.concrescence.org.uk/

3. SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH
• Spring 2018
• Four week Diary studies, three entries per week - using a bespoke app - Six ‘research cases’:
1. Silver Surfers: digitally literate over 65s who are engaged with several digital devices on a day-
to-day basis and confident in their use
2. Senior Explorers: over 65s with the means to engage who are gaining experience in paying
bills, talking to their grandchildren on Skype, getting recipes off the web, etc
3. Senior Leapers: over 65s attempting to cross the digital divide, acquiring the means to do so
and learning the skills to engage
4. Digital Young Professionals: student 18-25s doing IT/IS related courses at University,
immersed in and training to become professionals in the digital economy
5. Digital Natives: student 18-25s doing non-IT related courses at University, using learning
technologies and social media on a day-to-day basis as part of their studies and social lives
6. Digital Naturals: non-student 18-25s whose engagement with the digital is almost entirely
through their smartphone
• nVivo, Grounded Theory coding and themes; RA and PI separately; then together.

4. COLLOQUIUM
• June 14th 2018 MediaCityUK
• Mark Coeckelbergh, University of Vienna, Austria,
President of the Society for Philosophy of Technology
• Malcolm Garrett, Manchester School of Art,
UK, Master of the RSA’s Faculty of Royal Designers
for Industry
• Yasushi Hirai, Fukuoka University, Japan, Convenor,
Project Bergson Japan
• Chris Bush and Elizabeth Buie, SigmaUK Ltd,
Delivering exceptional digital solutions and an
improved user experience for all
• Tina Rock, University of Dundee, UK, Lecturer in
Philosophy and Whitehead scholar
• Bernd Stahl, de Montfort University, UK, Director of
the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility
• Output: A collection of essays - all papers to be
rewritten after - as a result of - the colloquium
Achnabreck, Kilmartin, Argyll & Bute, Scotland

5. MONOGRAPH
• To be completed by Jan 2019
1. Introduction
2. Bergson’s key ideas
3. Whitehead’s key ideas
4. Consonances, Dissonances, and a Process
Philosophy rooted in both - Bergson’s durée
reélle in the ‘I’ of Whitehead’s process
5. An outline of the literature on digital events and
experience, and why the proposed Bergson-
Whitehead framework might offer a better
understanding.
6. Findings and Theory from the sociological study,
compared to this process philosophy
7. Conclusion: A suggested framework for applying
a process philosophy approach to digital
projects, for information systems academics and
practitioners
Northumberland National Park, NE England

6. BERGSON
• intuition philosophique
• gestalt apprehension, ultra-
empiricism
• durée reélle
• real duration, choice,
irreversibility
• élan vital
• tendency, impetus - complex
entropic self-organisation
Northumberland National Park, NE England
Henri Bergson 1859-1941 French Philosopher

7. WHITEHEAD
• Non-bifurcated concept of
nature - blurring the
subject/object divide
• Fallacy of misplaced
concreteness /
abstractions
• Process of concrescence
of Actual Occasions into
Objective Data
Achnabreck, Kilmartin, Argyll & Bute, Scotland
Alfred North Whitehead 1861-1947 British Mathematician and Philosopher

8. CONCRESCENCE
• For Whitehead, an ‘object’ is not ‘senseless, valueless, purposeless.’
• The physical, and conceptual (mental) feelings, for Whitehead, always go together,
forming two poles within every entity.
• The physical or conceptual may be of more or less significance in each Actual
Occasion, but both are always there. It is their integration, different every time, which
makes up what Whitehead calls ‘concrescence’ – the process by which an Actual
Occasion, or ‘event’, comes to be, becomes, and passes.
• When the event is over, the Actual Occasion is ‘satisfied,’ or finished, and, ceasing to
be an Actual Occasion any more, it becomes an Objective Datum: it is in the past,
now, and can be studied
• But once it is an Objective Datum, it is immediately available for the concrescence of
new Actual Occasions.
• Thus, everything is related to everything, for each Actual Occasion must build up a
relation, through concrescence, with all the Objective Data in its world. The
succession of Actual Occasions makes up time, or the process of duration, as we
know and experience it.

9. INFOMATERIALITY
• Bergson’s durée reélle in the ‘I’ of
Whitehead’s process - for the digital age
• People / computer hardware
• Physical bodies, fingers, eyes - all
‘hardware’ like cabling, circuit boards and
haptic interfaces
• Social practices, power relations,
embedded politics within IT artefacts - all
such techné is fundamentally social
• Bergson’s homo faber - tools to make
tools
• I.S. exemplary of Whitehead’s non-
bifurcated view of reality
• Latour references Whitehead repeatedly
Northumberland National Park, NE England

10. GROUNDED THEORY
• The aim of the sociological research is
to generate theory that is grounded in
the data (Glaser rather than Strauss)
• The monograph will then compare the
process philosophy approach with the
theory generated from the data
• Do people’s interactions with the digital
express / reveal / imply the infomaterial
picture that arises from Bergson and
Whitehead’s ideas?
• Hence the Research Assistant doing
open, selective and theoretical coding
separately from the PI, and then the two
being combined
The Ringing Stone, Isle of Tiree, Scotland

11. THANKS
WWW.CONCRESCENCE.ORG.UK
DR DAVID KREPS
DAVID.KREPS.ORG
IMAGERY:
ALL PHOTOS, TAKEN BY DAVID KREPS, OF
NEOLITHIC CUP & RING MARKED STONES IN THE
UK
- SHOWING HOW INFORMATION EMBEDDED IN
MATERIALITY IS ONE OF THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF
HUMAN ENGAGEMENT WITH THE ENVIRONMENT
Long Meg, Penrith, NW England