The online lecture by author Cory Doctorow will be moderated by Allison Stanger (Middlebury College, USA).

ABSTRACT

The tech giants claim that they have to lock down their devices to defend you, but they keep failing to do so. The most science fictional question isn’t what a technology does, it’s who it does it for and to. A free and fair future starts with technology that is under its users’ control. We need a new Luddite movement, one that seizes control of the machines that try to seize control of us.

About Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. His latest book is CHOKEPOINT CAPITALISM (with Rebecca Giblin) nonfiction about creative labor markets and monopoly. His latest novel is ATTACK SURFACE, a standalone adult sequel to LITTLE BROTHER. He is also the author HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM, nonfiction about conspiracies and monopolies; and of RADICALIZED and WALKAWAY, science fiction for adults, a YA graphic novel called IN REAL LIFE; and young adult novels like HOMELAND, PIRATE CINEMA and LITTLE BROTHER. His first picture book was POESY THE MONSTER SLAYER (Aug 2020). In 2023/4, Tor Books will publish two more science fiction novels for adults: RED TEAM BLUES and THE LOST CAUSE; and Verso will publish THE INTERNET CON, a nonfiction book about monopoly and radical interoperability. He maintains a daily blog at Pluralistic.net. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, is a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University, a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

About Allison Stanger

Allison Stanger is Russell Leng ’60 Professor of International Politics and Economics at Middlebury College; 2021-22 Research Affiliate (co-lead, Theory of AI Practice Initiative) at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University; an External Professor and Science Board member at the Santa Fe Institute; and a Senior Advisor to the Hannah Arendt Humanities Network. In 2020-2021, she held the Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the Library of Congress. She is the author of Whistleblowers: Honesty in America from Washington to Trump (Chinese edition to appear in September 2022) and One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy, both with Yale University Press. She is the co-editor (with W. Brian Arthur and Eric Beinhocker) of Complexity Economics (SFI Press). Stanger’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, New York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post. She has been called to testify before Congress on five occasions and is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Stanger received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University.

Online Event

We are looking forward to seeing you:

• Participate via Zoom (Password: 0dzqxqiy).
• The talk will also be live streamed and recorded on the DIGHUM [YouTube] Channel(https://www.youtube.com/digitalhumanism).
• For further announcements and information, please visit the DIGHUM website, which also provides slides and recordings of all our past events.

The DIGHUM Lecture 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 the DIGHUM Lecture Series, a new initiative 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 seriously affects 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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