Nerd Nite #3

Nerd Nite is back for our third episode. Three charming speakers will titillate your grey matter with knowledge, humour, and flashy high tech overheads. As always the formula is simple; three nerdy talks and a few drinks.

When: Thursday, September 24, 2015 (7:30pm for 8pm)
Where: The Union Club (122 Baylis Street, Wagga)
$10 in advance, includes a free drink
$10 at the door (no free drink)
*18+ event, no minors

Buy Tickets here

You Can’t Talk: About Vaccines
Tabin Brooks

It’s been said that “there’s just no talking to some people”. Vaccination has been a hotly debated medical procedures from the outset and remains contested to this day. From Jenner’s smallpox vaccine to Jenny McCarthy’s public stance against vaccines stemming a now-retracted 1998 paper which suggested that vaccines caused autism. Tabin will take you through how rehetoric is used by both sides, and show you why, when it comes to vaccines, it’s nearly impossible to get all parties on the same page.

BIO: Tabin’s qualifications lie in the fields of Psychology, Linguistics and Immunology. Whilst the only reason why he got his first degree *may* have been so he could make being a “cunning linguist” a career, this trifecta allows him to dig deeper into why people say what they think about science.

Exploitation and Enslavement: A Story of Social Media
Tim Klapdor

The dream of the World Wide Web was an open distributed network. Social media companies have perverted that. These companies sell themselves as enablers of human connection but do so while becoming increasingly centralised and enclosed. They have created vast containers into which we pour our lives into. They control and manipulate these containers that contain our personal identities, our data, our habits, and our dreams, then sell it to the highest bidder. Let’s dig into what’s actually happening with social media and its agenda to exploit and enslave us. **may contain whiffs of Marxism**.

BIO: Tim has a long history designing, developing and working in the online environment and is currently the Online Learning Technology Leader at Charles Sturt University. With a background in graphic design and digital media he’s a vocal advocate and a critic of digital technology and its role in our lives, especially in education.

You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Till its Gone
Tim Wess

Let’s talk about the the perils and pitfalls of digital preservation for cultural heritage. Why do we bother keeping stuff? We are running out of space, can’t afford to keep everything, and governments don’t fund the capability to do this. So who decides what we keep and what we throw away as individuals and nations? If we want to hold onto objects what are we doing to preserve the objects we value? For some objects we could just make digital images and chuck the originals. But this leaves us with ethical and technical dilemmas because the unique and rich information we get from objects may be beyond the colour of the paint or the written word. I want to show how these aspects come together in the combination of priceless objects with scarily big partial accelerators. As our techchnology improves we may never know what we have got till its gone.

BIO: Tim is the Executive Dean at Charles Sturt University. His research has focussed on bio polymers, especially collagen, in contexts from biomedical to food to cultural heritage artefacts. When not working or cycling to work, he likes to study languages, especially minority ones where he’s lived. Tim now live in Wagga with his family and is currently studying the Wiradjuri language.

Comments are closed.