Date and time: Monday, 16:00-20:00 13 October 2025
Schedule: 16:00-18:00 — short presentations; 18:00-20:00 — keynote speech
Location: EE4-5 (East End Development) in the Hamilton Building, Trinity College Dublin
Room: LTEE1: Pharmacy Lecture Theatre
Format: Hybrid
In-person Registration: https://bit.ly/4nGdv6K
Zoom Registration: https://tcd-ie.zoom.us/meeting/register/Toh9GHi7RNaiun2uYwD97w
Can you [simulate the quantum mechanics] with a new kind of computer – a quantum computer? (…) Now it turns out, as far as I can tell, that you can simulate this with a quantum system, with quantum computer elements. It's not a Turing machine, but a machine of a different kind.
Richard P. Feynman, “Simulating Physics with Computers,” International Journal of Theoretical Physics, Vol. 21, Nos. 6/7, 1982, p. 474.
The machines are social before being technical. Or, rather, there is a human technology which exists before a material technology. No doubt the latter develops its effects in the whole social field.
Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, 2006 [1986], p. 39.
The year 2025 has been declared by UNESCO the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology in order to raise awareness about quantum science and its applications. Stemming from SFI-funded research project “Not a Space Race. Towards a Quantum Policy,” hosted by CONNECT and School of Engineering, this transdisciplinary symposium (science, engineering, art, society) will interrogate policies, discourses, models and imaginaries relating to quantum computing and its associated infrastructural and material ecosystems. Echoing Deleuze’s recognition that “machines are social before being technical,” we are interested in posing larger questions about the possibilities of quantum technologies but also its risks and how these can be mitigated so as to create social value, accountability and a citizen-centred approach. In this way, we formulate an expanded understanding of quantum technicity as involving both the social field and technical operations.
True to the transdisciplinary approach, we focus not only on the scientific foundations, or technical considerations of quantum technologies alongside their practical, infrastructural aspects but also on their critical and creative aspects. In this way, we foreground the importance of imagination and artistic creativity as a source of speculative problem-solving approaches. The symposium will comprise a transdisciplinary panel of short presentations followed by a keynote on the ideas prefiguring quantum mechanics/computing in philosophy by philosopher Prof. Shajara Néehilan Bensusan (The University of Brasília). Panellists will include physicist and electrical engineer John Campbell (NUIM); visual artist Nadia Amstrong (NCAD); Quantum AI and Finance Art scholar Dr. Stephanie Dossou; as well as digital artist and critical media scholar Dr. Radek Przedpełski (TCD).
(Quantum) Technology : A Transdisciplinary Symposium abstracts and bios