We’re going to go on a field trip for the first half of class on Wednesday, September 27. The plan is below. Please help me get the word out to everyone in class using your personal contacts so that everyone knows what we’re doing.

On Wednesday, September 27 at 6:00pm, let’s meet in Namm 119 (this is the room next to the cafeteria, in the space leading to the Atrium) for a special guest lecture by Professor Nina Samuel from Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. She is giving a talk titled, “The Islands of Benoit Mandelbrot: Exhibiting the Materiality of Thinking.” I think that you all should learn some things about fractal geometry covered in this talk, because those things will inform some of your thinking and reading about science fiction later this semester.

The talk begins at 6:00pm, so please arrive a few minutes early to find a seat if possible. If you arrive late, please come on in, but find a seat quietly. I recommend that everyone have a notebook out to jot down some notes of things that you learn in the talk.

The talk is scheduled to last until 7:30pm. After it is over, let’s make our way back to our normal classroom in Namm 605 as quickly as possible to take attendance, and talk about the lecture and your two readings for Wednesday’s class—H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (abridged) and E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops.”

Since we will have less time for lecture, I am making the lecture available online as a video. You can watch it here:

It is about 30 minutes long. Try to watch this video and make your lecture notes from it before class on Wednesday so that you can ask me questions about it when we meet after the guest lecture.

Again, please spread the word to your friends in class in case they don’t see this announcement in their email or on OpenLab. If you have any questions about Wednesday’s class, please let me know.