Mitcham interview

Laureano Ralon’s latest interview is with philosopher of technology CARL MITCHAM.

Mitcham wouldn’t remember me, but I vaguely remember him. We overlapped at Penn State during 1990-91, and I passed him in the hall a few times. At the time I wasn’t aware that I had any interest in the philosophy of technology, and thus I ended up not taking either of his graduate classes that year.

Besides, I seem to recall that Mitcham was only partly in Philosophy and partly in an STS program at Penn State, an acronym that meant nothing to me in my dim, distant, pre-Latour days. In fact, that’s probably one of the more interesting “what ifs” of my own academic life: what if I had struck up a conversation with Mitcham at a party and ended up getting involved with STS at Penn State? Among other things, I might have read Latour (and related authors) about 8 years earlier. [ADDENDUM: Yes, I’m aware that his group doesn’t think highly of Latour, but I would have read him and thought highly of him.] I’m not sure what that would have done to my trajectory, but I’m absolutely sure that We Have Never Been Modern would have delighted me at any time from about age 18 onward; I simply happened not to read it until I was 29.