Digital Humanism and Democracy in Geopolitical Context: Allison Stanger (Middlebury College, USA)

Moderator & Respondent: Moshe Y. Vardi (Rice University, USA)

Abstract

Government and corporate surveillance in autocracies have very different ethical ramifications than the same actions do in liberal democracies. Open societies protect individual rights and distinguish between the public and private spheres. Neither condition pertains in China, an instantiation of what the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson calls private government. Ignoring the significance of such differences, which are only reinforced by differing business-government relationships in the United States, EU, and China, is likely to undercut both liberal democratic values and US-European national security.

Online Event

To participate, go to the following link, Password: 0dzqxqiy.

All talks will be streamed and recorded on the Digital Humanism YouTube channel. For announcements and slides see the website.

About the Series

Digital humanism deals with the complex relationship between man and machine. It acknowledges the potential of Informatics and IT. At the same time, it points to related apparent threats such as privacy violations, ethical concerns with AI, automation, and loss of jobs, and the ongoing monopolization on the Web. The Corona crisis has shown these two faces of the accelerated digitalization—we are in a crucial moment in time.

For this reason, we started a new initiative—DIGHUM lectures—with regular online events to discuss the different aspects of Digital Humanism. We will have a speaker on a specific topic (30 minutes) followed by a discussion of 30 minutes every second Tuesday of each month at 5:00 PM CEST. This crisis does seriously affect our mobility, but it also offers the possibility to participate in events from all over the world—let’s take this chance to meet virtually.

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