TU Wien DIGHUM

Open Societies and Democratic Sustainability in the Shadow of Big Tech

Lecture of the IWM Digital Humanism Fellowship Program.

Speaker: Allison Stanger (Middlebury College, USA)
Speaker: Allison Stanger (Middlebury College, USA)

November 22nd 2022

  • 18:00 – 20:00 CET
  • IWM Library
  • 1090 Vienna, Spittelauer Lände 3

On This Page

This event is part of the Digital Humanism Fellowship Program. The Digital Humanism program is realized by the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in cooperation with the TU Wien Informatics Doctoral School and the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (CAIML). It is supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology.

About the Event

November 22, 2022
6:00 – 8:00 PM
(18:00) CET

Visit IWM’s website for recording and more information.

Abstract

There is growing public awareness that the velocity of technological innovation has outstripped the West’s efforts to harness it to the common good. An unprecedented shift in the balance of power between multinational industry and national governments has been a necessary condition for these new challenges. How else could a freely elected American president be silenced by Google, Twitter, and Facebook? How else could Facebook’s Instagram be exposed as knowingly causing harm to teenagers without government penalty?

While many of these problems are in some ways new, they have also been previously encountered. Learning from past thought on existential threats to human values can help us better protect and defend the contemporary free world.