Educating in the Era of Peep Culture: Library Speaker Series Mar. 30

On Monday March 30, join McMaster University Library for “Educating in the Era of Peep Culture,” featuring McMaster Writer-in-Residence Hal Niedzviecki.*

In the era of peep culture, we are learning to love watching ourselves and our neighbours. We are turning away from pre-scripted entertainments, from movies and books and pop music, and spending more and more time amusing ourselves by watching the real life travails of other people on Facebook, Twitter, webcam, YouTube, Reality TV and more.

In this talk, Hal Niedzviecki will explore the lessons educators and librarians can take away from participatory voyeurism as entertainment.

He will focus, specifically, on how schools, universities and libraries might adopt new roles in the age of peep culture as facilitators, educators, and collectors.

Niedzviecki will argue that educational and community institutions have an important role to play in the age of peep; a role they must embrace if they are to avoid becoming nothing more than free Internet terminals providing access to an endlessly crisscrossing, contradictory network of authorless opinion.

When:  Monday March 30, 2015 (2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.)

Where:  Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship (Mills Library, 1st floor)

*Hal Niedzviecki is the Mabel Pugh Taylor Writer-in-Residence, co-sponsored by McMaster’s Department of English and Cultural Studies and the Hamilton Public Library.

Niedzviecki’s book “The Peep Diaries” was named as one of Oprah’s “25 Books You Can’t Put Down.”  He is a writer, speaker, culture commentator and is the author of 8 books of fiction and non-fiction. He’s also the founder and publisher of Broken Pencil: the magazine of zine culture and the independent arts. 

Copies of Hal’s book, “The Peep Diaries” will be available for sale at this event.