Quantum Intuitions: Affective Histories of the Future of Computing
As a new quantum age is on the horizon but not yet fully actualized, this talk explores how mining affective genealogies of ‘the quantum’ might surface urgent perspectives on our current computational moment, while conjuring sociotechnical futures beyond Big Tech rhetorics. What might emerge, Prof Pedwell asks, in thinking through the logics of quantum intuitions? Prof Pedwell explores quantum intuitions that are not only multiple, but also strange, disconcerting, and explicitly counter-intuitive. Invoking the physicist Richard Feynman’s post-war ‘elemental intuition’ and millennial theories of affective ‘quantum potential’, she imagines a twenty-first century physics of computation that engages potentiality and ‘the virtual’ to reconfigure collective energy for survival amid the compounding geopolitical, ecological, and technological crises of the present.
Date: 28.10.2026, 9:30–10:30 CET
Speaker
Prof. Carolyn Pedwell
School of Arts, Lancaster University, UK
Carolyn Pedwell is Professor in Digital Media in the School of Arts at Lancaster University. She is the author of three monographs including, most recently, Revolutionary Routines: The Habits of Social Transformation (McGill-Queens UP, 2021). Carolyn is also the co-editor (with Gregory J. Seigworth) of The Affect Theory Reader 2: Worldings, Tensions, Futures (Duke UP, 2023). Her new monograph, Speculative Machines and Us: Intuition, AI, and the Making of Computational Cultures, is currently under external review. Carolyn’s current research is focused on socio-political, cultural, and affective histories of AI and digital and quantum computing. Her British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship (2024-2025), ‘Speculative Machines and Us: Intuition, AI and the Making of Computational Cultures’, developed a post-war genealogy of human-machine relations in Britain and North America oriented around shifting conceptualisations of intuition, with reference to ‘artificial intuition’. Carolyn is also a Co-Investigator on the AHRC BRAID-funded project, ‘Animals in Translation: AI, Ethics, and the Future of Interspecies Dialogue (2026-2028, PI Delphine Grass).
About: Digital Emotional Governance Seminar Series
Join us for an online seminar series exploring how emotions are measured, managed, and mobilized through digital technologies and data-driven governance. Sessions will examine topics such as affective and embodied computing, algorithmic decision-making, biometric surveillance, histories and futures of affect cultures, the strengths and weaknesses of anticipatory ethics, digital and embodied warfare, and the politics of emotional AI. The seminars are online and open to all.
With these talks we will generate discussion on the implications of emerging emotion sensing technologies for public policy, ethics, and everyday life in a digitally mediated world. Speakers provide critical perspectives on technology, governance, and society. Engage with leading thinkers and contribute to global conversations on the future of digital emotional governance.
Organisers
Tabea Bork-Hüffer
Heidelberg University
Tabea is Co-Director of the Heidelberg Centre of the Environment, founding member and Co-Investigator at the Camilla and Georg Jellinek Centre for Ethics.
Jessica Pykett
University of Birmingham
Jessica is Co-Director of the Centre for Urban Wellbeing, and Principal Investigator of the ESRC Ethics and Expertise project.
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Research Group Transient Spaces & Societies
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