Past and Upcoming Appearances

 

Past speaking engagements (Total number = 173)

  • “Writing (Deaf) Space,” University at Buffalo, February 2019. I was on a panel with two architects, and we each spoke about how we’ve engaged with the idea of architecting for deaf users. For example, at Gallaudet, several buildings were built with long sight lines and plenty of internal windows to make it easy to conduct conversations in sign language. In my presentation, I discussed how ASL’s use of space influenced my design of the language spoken by intelligent social insect colonies in my novel-in-progress.
  • Panelist at CNN’s HumanXDesign event about human augmentation, New York City, August 2016.
  • “What It’s Like to Go Deaf and Get Your Hearing Back With an Implanted Computer (And What That Means for Theory),” Vassar College, February 2016. Spoke to three classes as well, and had a public conversation about sound with Trevor Pinch of Cornell University.
  • Gave five lectures over three days at Penn State University, October 2014. My visit was sponsored by the Institute for the Arts and Humanities; the Office of the Vice Provost for Educational Equity; the College of the Liberal Arts; the Presidential Leadership Academy; The Schreyer Honors College; Teaching and Learning with Technology; the College of Communications; the School of Engineering Design, Technology and Professional Programs; the Office of Disability Services; the College of Health and Human Development; the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders; and Adaptive Technology Services in the University Libraries.
    • “Bionic Ears, Bionic Everything Else: The Now and Future of Body Technologies,” Princeton University, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. May 2014.
    • Spoke to parents and teens in an evening talk, and to staff in a morning talk, at the Montreal Oral School for the Deaf, Montreal, Canada, March 2014.
    • “New Bodies, New Lives.” St. Louis University, St. Louis, MO, March 2014.
    • “The Spiritual Journey of A Cyborg.” TEDxLowerEastSide, October 2013. The video is here. (Not captioned, unfortunately.)
    • “Transformation: When The Only Way Out Is Through.” University of Akron,September 2013.
    • Keynote, Northeast Cochlear Implant Convention. Boxborough, Massachusetts, July 2013.
    • Lectured at UCSF’s Grand Rounds on cochlear implants, San Francisco, California, June 2013.
    • Participated in Science Foo Camp (SciFoo) 2013, Google, Mountain View, California, June 2013. I spoke at a panel on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (with Princeton astrophysics postdoc Lucianne Walkowicz and NASA Ames director Pete Worden) and gave a talk on cochlear implants.
    • Arizona State University’s “Tough Love for Science” program. Sponsored by ASU’s Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes, Washington, D.C. office. June 2013.
    • Lectured to VOICE for Hearing Impaired Children’s 21st annual conference in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. May 2013.
    • Lectured to Steve Potter’s class “Neuroengineering Fundamentals” at Georgia Tech. April 2013.
    • “How to Put Your Brain on the Internet: Lessons from a Cyborg,” public lecture, Georgia Tech. April 2013.
    • Participated in ten panels at the 2013 Conference for World Affairs, including “Our Cyborg Future,” “Looking for God in the Particles,” “Space: The Next Giant Leap,” “Dating for Dummies,” and “How To Create, Find, Or Stumble On Your Dream Job.” April 2013.
    • Keynoted at “Language, Literacy, and Technology: Links to Success for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students.” Westminster, MD. March 2013.
    • Public lecture, “How To Put Your Brain on the Internet,” Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. March 2013. Captioned video here.
    • Co-facilitated a workshop at Emerge, a three-day event on futurism and storytelling at Arizona State University. February 2013.
    • Lectured on “The Life of a Science Writer,” Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. January 2013.
    • Lectured to Jonathan Moreno and Martha Farah’s class on bioethics, University of Pennsylvania. December 2012.
    • Keynoted the 33rd Annual Conference on Mainstreaming Students with Hearing Loss organized by the Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech. October 2012.
    • “Transformations: When The Only Way Out Is Through,” Weber State University, Ogden, Utah. October 2012.
    • Reader at the DC Science Cafe’s “science poetry night,” September 2012.
    • Taught a mini-course at Politics & Prose on comparing a novel of cyborg-gone-bad (Michael Crichton’s Terminal Man) to my memoir of cyborg-gone-good (Rebuilt.) July 2012.
    • Gave a brown-bag talk at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution, Washington D.C. Title: “How Alien Can An Alien Mind Be? Principles for Communication.” June 2012.
    • Gave the Edmund Lyon Memorial Lecture at Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York. Title: “Cyborg Ear, Cyborg I: Writing a Book, Rewriting a Life.” April 2012.
    • Lectured to Pamela Kincheloe’s class at Rochester Institute of Technology. April 2012.
    • Keynote lecture, New Jersey Speech and Hearing Association Annual Convention, Long Branch, NJ. April 2012.
    • “Medicine and Human/Machine Integration.” University of Nevada at Reno. April 2012.
    • Lecture at The Davidson Academy, Reno, Nevada. April 2012.
    • “Deaf Futurism,” Emory University Digital Scholarship Commons (DiSC) Symposium on Disability and Technology, Atlanta, Georgia. April 2012.
    • Lectured at Georgia Tech to Katy Crowther’s English 1102 class. April 2012.
    • Georgetown, to a bioethics seminar titled “Bioethics and the Moral Imagination.” April 2012.
    • Georgia Tech, lecture to Steve Potter’s class “Neuroengineering Fundamentals,” March 2012.
    • Georgia Tech, “How To Put Your Brain On The Internet,” March 2012. YouTube video here.
    • City University of New York (CUNY), “Cyborg Theory and Practice”, in a lecture series titled “BioFeminisms: Science, Matter & Agency.” March 2012.
    • New York University, “How To Put Your Brain On The Internet.” March 2012.
    • Saint Joseph College, West Hartford, Connecticut. “How to Put Your Brain on the Internet.” March 2012.
    • UC-Santa Cruz, “Cochlear Implants: The Experience and Ethical Issues.” Santa Cruz, California, November 2011.
    • University of Pennsylvania, preceptorial lecture, “Cyborg: Theory and Practice.” November 2011.
    • Speaker at the Italian Science Festival, Genoa, Italy to commemorate the publication of Rebuilt in Italian. My talk is here (dubbed in Italian), and I did a short video interview afterward (in English, here.) October 2011.
    • Public lecture, “Cyborg Theory and Practice,” Georgetown University, October 2011.
    • Public lecture, “How to Put Your Brain on the Internet,” Bard College, September 2011.
    • World Future Society, Washington D.C. chapter, September 2011.
    • Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota, ahead of their Nobel conference on The Brain and Being Human, September 2011. The YouTube video is here.
    • Interviewed by Andres Martinez of the New America Foundation, March 2011. See the webcast here.
    • Speaker at HASTAC, Duke University, March 2011.
    • Spoke at Noblis, a science/technology/policy consulting firm in Falls Church, Virginia, March 2011.
    • Spoke to an “Introduction to Bioengineering” course at George Mason University, March 2011.
    • Reading and signing at Politics and Prose, Washington D.C., February 2011.
    • Reading and signing at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Janelia Farm campus, February 2011.
    • Spoke to a freshman seminar at UC-Santa Cruz, November 2010.
    • “Cochlear Implants from the Inside”, Michigan Audiology Coalition, Lansing, Michigan, October 2010.
    • “Neurotechnology from the Inside,” for an executive leadership course for the National Institutes of Health conducted by The Brookings Institute, Washington, D.C., September 2010.
    • Procter & Gamble, “Sensing”, New York City, September 2010.
    • Read from Rebuilt and World Wide Mind at the Institute for the Future’s Health Horizons annual conference at the Cavallo Point Conference Center in Sausalito, California. Also participated in a panel discussion. June 2010.
    • Gave a talk and Q&A with parents of deaf children at The River School, an elementary school where 15% of the children have hearing loss (most use CIs) and 85% have normal hearing. May 2010.
    • Spoke at TEDx Islay in Austin, Texas. “TEDx” is a sort of franchise of the TED conference, and Islay is the name of a 1986 novel by Douglas Bullard, who envisioned a country that the deaf community calls home. May 2010.
    • Gave a talk on cochlear implants and brain implants at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, Arlington, Virginia. February 2010.
    • Colloquium participant, “When Everything is Programmable”, Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, CA. September 8, 2009.
    • Gave a lunchtime presentation at Karl Deisseroth’s lab at Stanford. May 2009.
    • Spoke to a parent group in Annandale, Virgina. May 2009.
    • “My Collision with Neurotechnology,” in the Speakers and Signers colloquium at MIT. April 2009.
    • Speaker on seven panels during the Conference on World Affairs, April 2009. Subjects included “Ending the War on Science”, “Brain Quirks”, “Happy Bicentenary, Darwin”, “Cyborgs: Aliens Among Us?” and my favorite, “The Battlefield of Flirting.”
    • “Confessions of a Reluctant Cyborg,” public lecture, Georgia Tech. February 2009.
    • Lectured to Steve Potter’s class “Neuroengineering Fundamentals” at Georgia Tech. February 2009.
    • Member of a panel titled “Emerging Technology and the Future of Independent Living,” run by a nonprofit named HealthTech. February 2009.
    • Spoke at the Virginia chapter of the Alexander Graham Bell Foundation, Williamsburg, VA, November 2008.
    • Guest lecturer at UC-Santa Cruz, for a course titled “Participatory Evolution: from Human to Posthuman.” October 2008.
    • “Cochlear Implants and the Future of the Deaf World,” Gallaudet University. October 2008.
    • Addressed the Sinai Forum, a nonprofit organization in Indiana that brings in speakers from around the country. October 2008.
    • Spoke at the Gordon Research Conference on Science and Technology Policy in Big Sky, Montana. The theme of the conference was “Governing Emerging Technologies.” August 17, 2008.
    • Spoke at the “Frontiers of Healthcare” conference, Brown University, Providence, RI, June 2008.
    • Spoke at the SV Life Sciences CEO Connections Summit, a group of CEOs of biotech venture capital companies, in Key Biscayne, Florida, May 2008.
    • Spoke at the Institute for the Future’s 33rd Annual Ten-Year Forecast Retreat, held at UCSF’s Misison Bay conference center, April 2008.
    • Spoke to Jose Blackorby’s course on special education at San Francisco State University, March 2008.
    • Delivered a colloquium talk on the World Wide Mind concept at the Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, CA. February 2008.
    • Gave a reading with Josh Swiller at Summit Speech School, New Providence, NJ. November 2007.
    • Gave a talk titled, “From World Wide Web to World Wide Mind: Is it Possible?” at Arizona State University. November 2007.
    • Spoke to Bob Ostertag’s Technoculture course at UC-Davis, November 2007.
    • Spoke to the honors program students at Gallaudet University, October 2007.
    • Read at the RADAR Reading Series, San Francisco Main Public Library, August 2007.
    • Keynote speaker at the Educational Conference for Pediatric and Educational Audiologists, Reno, Nevada, July 2007.
    • Keynote speaker at the 6th Biennial Northeast Cochlear Implant Convention in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, July 2007.
    • Panelist at the 59th annual Conference on World Affairs, Boulder, Colorado, April 2007. Panels of mine included “Community in a Wildly Wired World”, “Engineering Humans: Bionics and Biomedicine”, and “Let’s Talk About Sex…or Not.” See the full list of my panels here.
    • Speaker at the Literary Cuisine luncheon, Santa Clara University, April 2007.
    • “Politics, Technology, and the Future of Deafness,” public lecture, Gallaudet University, March 2007.
    • Spoke to a freshman writing class at the University of San Francisco, February 2007.
    • Duke University, public lecture at the Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary Studies titled “The Future of Bodies and Communities in a Hypertechnological Age”, February 2007.
    • Reading and signing at a chapter meeting of Self-Help for the Hard of Hearing, San Francisco, January 2006.
    • Participated in a reading to benefit the Meridian Gallery, San Francisco, November 2006.
    • Gave a talk to Bob Ostertag’s Technoculture course at UC-Davis, November 2006.
    • Speaker on a Litquake panel, October 2006.
    • Spoke to a class on disability at San Francisco State University, October 2006.
    • Book reading and signing at Black Oak Books in Berkeley, California, September 2006.
    • Public talk on cochlear implant technology at the IBM Almaden Research Center’s monthly health care colloquium, July 2006.
    • Speaker at Boston Scientific’s awards banquet, Boston, June 2006.
    • Reading at “Scary Science”, Edinburgh Castle, San Francisco, June 2006.
    • Speaker at the Ear Foundation’s “Twilight Lecture”, Nottingham, United Kingdom, April 2006.
    • Panelist at the Conference on World Affairs, Boulder, Colorado. Panels I was on included “Super Geeks–Programming Outside the Box”; “Love Is the Answer–What Is the Question?”; “and “Pheromones and Stiletto Heels–Weapons of Mass Seduction”. See the full list here. April 2006.
    • “Reflections on a Remade Life” at Ears, Hearing, and Beyond, Virginia Merrill Bloedel Hearing Research Center at the University of Washington, Seattle. April 2006.
    • Speaker at the Peninsula chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of America (formerly SHHH). Redwood City, California, April 2006.
    • Lectured to Dr. Jose Carmena’s course on brain-machine interfaces at UC-Berkeley, February 2006.
    • Addressed the San Francisco chapter of Self-Help for the Hard of Hearing (SHHH), February 2006.
    • Addressed the school and guest-taught two writing classes at The Menlo School, a private high school in Atherton, CA. February 2006.
    • “An Inside Perspective on Cochlear Implants…by a John Tracy Clinic Graduate.” John Tracy Clinic, Los Angeles, CA, November 2005.
    • “Beyond Cochlear Implants: Implications for Future Neurotechnologies.” University of Southern California, Los Angeles, November 2005.
    • “Postmodernism, Through the Body.” Invited talk at UC-Davis’s English and TechnoCulture Studies program, Davis, CA, November 2005.
    • Keynote speaker, Annual Symposium on Deafness, Language, and Learning, Breckenridge, Colorado, October 2005.
    • “Beyond Cochlear Implants: Implications for Cognitive Technologies.” Keynote talk at the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disorders’ annual conference, Boulder, CO, October 2005.
    • Panelist on “Science is Sexy,” a discussion on science writing held at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, October 2005. The other panelists were James Calder, Michael Pollan, Richard Rhodes, and David Ewing Duncan. A Litquake event.
    • “My Gosh, I’m Posthuman.” Brown University, September 2005.
    • Numerous book readings in May-June 2005, including Books Inc., Cover to Cover, and Writers With Drinks (San Francisco), Kepler’s (Menlo Park), University Bookstore (Seattle), Vroman’s (Pasadena), Harvard Bookstore (Boston), BookPeople (Austin), and Cody’s (Berkeley.)
    • “Cochlear Implants and Transhumanism.” Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, CA, August 2005.
    • Invited talk to approximately 200 members of the sales staff at Advanced Bionics, July 2005.
    • “’What’s It Sound Like?’ An Introduction to Cochlear Implants (By a Cochlear Implant User).” New Jersey Speech & Hearing Association, Atlantic City, NJ, May 2005.
    • “Computers and Drugs Working Together: The Present and Future of Neural Biotechnologies.” The Future Salon, Palo Alto, CA, August 2004. My talk is available on the web as streaming video here.