Theofanis Tasis was born in 1976 in Munich, where he also grew up. He studied Physics at the University of Crete and received his PhD in Philosophy with highest honors from Freie Universität Berlin. He teaches Contemporary Practical Philosophy at Alpen-Adria Universität in Austria and is a member of the Berlin Humanities Academy. He is also a visiting professor at Universität St. Gallen in Switzerland. He has held fellowships at Princeton University (Stanley J. Seeger Fellow), Université Saint-Louis in Brussels (Marie Curie Fellow), and Freie Universität Berlin (Erasmus Fellow). His research focuses on the relationship between politics, ethics, and digital technology, with particular attention to the concepts of image, mortality, and the art of life. His works Politics of Life: Irony (Eurasia Editions, 2012) and Castoriadis: A Philosophy of Autonomy (Eurasia Editions, 2007) have been awarded the Kavafy Prize by the University of Athens. Other works in Greek include Politics of Life II: Self-Care in the Iconic Society (Armos Editions), Pharmakon (Eurasia Editions), and the poetry collections Physiological Findings (Kedros Editions) and Afternoons in Capitalism (Typotheto Editions). His translations include books by Martin Heidegger, John Stewart Mill, Alexandre Nehamas, and Roberto Mangabeira Unger.
Michalis Bletsas is a researcher and Director of Computing at the MIT Media Lab. He was one of the founding members of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), a nonprofit organization that designed and built an extremely low-cost laptop aimed at transforming the way children learn worldwide. During his tenure at OLPC, he contributed to the industrial design, electronics, and software of the XO-1 laptop. Before joining the Media Lab, he was a systems engineer at Aware, Inc., where he developed high-performance software libraries for Intel distributed-memory parallel supercomputers and worked on applying ADSL technology for home internet access. He has extensive experience advising on technology and technology policy, co-founded two companies, and has served as board member or consultant for several others. He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and an M.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Boston University.
