I am sitting at home writing this when I’m supposed to be in New York City. I had two flights cancelled today and after 5 hours in the airport was sent home, which was too bad since I was scheduled to give a talk at NYU this evening. Instead of giving up, we used Skype, which was incredibly easy. Apparently there was a giant image of me on the screen — good thing I left the dress clothes on (I resisted the temptation to do the talk in sweats) and I got to see an outstanding talk by my co-panelist, Steve Wurtzler, and take some really great questions from the audience. It’s amazing to think that even when I got to McGill in 2004 they were still talking about sending oodles of money on outfitting rooms for “teleconferencing.” Now all you need is an internet connection, a laptop, a projector and some speakers. Also I hear there’s a new technology where you can carry a bunch of music around.
For all my grumbling about the metaphysics of presence, I would have preferred to be there, but it went surprisingly well. Let’s just hope administrators don’t decide that’s the future of the invited talk.
I am hoping to catch a flight out tomorrow so I can still enjoy the Columbia conference.
Great talk, great dress clothes. I was the one person in the audience who laughed too loudly when you mentioned that you could just turn up the volume of questions from the audience, and afterward several of us went to a bar and talked about Adorno and utopianism. Hopefully I can see you on Saturday in person.