We are pleased to announce a public technosemiotics seminar by Assistant Professor Ľudmila Lacková Bennett from Charles University and Programme Director in Linguistics at Palacký University on the topic “Is Time Still Linear? Digital Media and the New Spatiality of Temporal Experience”.
Ľudmila Lacková Bennett is an Associate Dean and Assistant Professor in the Semiotics program at Charles University in Prague and Program Director in Linguistics at Palacký University in Olomouc. She is an executive member of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies (ISBS) and Director of the International Semiotics Institute (ISI). She serves as Editor-in-Chief of Linguistic Frontiers (De Gruyter Open/Sciendo), Associate Editor of Biosemiotics (Springer), and Associate Editor of the book series Numanities: Arts and Humanities in Progress (Springer). Her latest monograph Language of Life: A Peircean Approach to Living Organisms (2025) explores applications of Peircean semeiotic in biology and linguistics. Her current research bridges cognitive semiotics, cognitive linguistics, and media theory. Inspired in part by Marshall McLuhan, her work avoids strong technological determinism and instead develops a testable hypothesis concerning the impact of digital media on time perception. Building on research in cognitive linguistics, which shows that writing direction (left-to-right, right-to-left, vertical) shapes temporal conceptualization, she examines how digital environments introduce new forms of spatial orientation. In digital writing and interaction, directionality extends beyond fixed axes through practices such as scrolling, swiping, and multidirectional navigation. The project investigates how these novel spatio-temporal dynamics may influence conceptual metaphors of time, potentially reshaping how users experience temporal flow in digitally mediated contexts.
We are looking forward to meeting you!
The seminar can also be followed via Zoom (Meeting ID: 948 5986 2566, Passcode: 853863).
