Lecture series: Making sense of the digital society
The rapidly advancing technological shift brings about enormous uncertainties. To better understand and shape these changes in the future, comprehensive explanations and classifications are essential. Therefore, the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) and the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) have launched the lecture series Making sense of the digital society. The goal is to develop a European perspective on the current transformation process and its societal implications.
A collection of the previous lectures is also part of the Digital Society Compendium.
Latest lecture
Kim Lane Scheppele: Democracy at risk – The autocrat's spyware?
Past lectures
Kim Lane Scheppele: Democracy at risk – The autocrat's spyware?
In this session, we discuss how the use of surveillance technologies is increasingly undermining democratic systems within the EU.
16.10.2024
Carola Westermeier: Money as a digital technology
In this issue, we will discuss the evolution of virtual money, how we deal with it and the concerns it raises about data protection and market dominance.
03.07.2024
Rob Kitchin: Navigating Smart Cities
In this session, we will discuss equal access to technology and decision-making, social justice and agency among all citizens within smart cities.
14.05.2024
Daniel Miller: The global evolution of smart technologies
Daniel Miller's keynote will provide insight into the results of ten years of ethnographic research on digital media use.
21.11.2023
Lorenz Hilty & James Maguire: Digitising the environmental paradigm
These lectures by Lorenz Hilty & James Maguire give an insight into the challenges of sustainability in a digitised world.
19.09.2023
Gina Neff: Making AI work for us
This lecture by Gina Neff gives an insight into how AI can work for us.
03.05.2023
Stefania Milan: Resistance in the datafied society
This lecture by Professor Stefania Milan gives an insight into resistance in the datafied society.
06.10.2022
David Betz: Warfare in the digital age
This talk gives an insight into warfare in the digital age.
29.08.2022
Kanta Dihal: How the world sees intelligent machines
This talk will introduce culture-specific visions of technology from around the world and discusses if these marginalised perspectives are still of great relevance for today’s societies.
11.05.2022
Krisztina Rozgonyi and Marius Dragomir: Freedom of expression in Central and Eastern Europe
This talk will examine the media systems in Central and Eastern Europe and how we can safeguard the freedom of expression in the digital era
21.03.2022
Helen Kennedy: Everyday life in times of datafication
Helen Kennedy will talk about the relationship between existing social inequalities and datafication.
16.11.2021
Judith Simon: The ethics of AI and big data
This talk will examine how fundamental rights and moral values can be accounted for in the design, development and management of digital technologies
06.09.2021
Genia Kostka: Big data dreams and local reality in China
This talk will examine the intended and unintended consequences of incorporating digital technologies into local governance processes in Chinese cities.
15.06.2021
Jan-Werner Müller: The critical infrastructure of democracy
Political parties and professional media are undergoing major structural transformations today. The lecture will offer an account of the distinctive roles of intermediary institutions and also suggest normative criteria for judging how well intermediary powers are working.
09.03.2021
Iyad Rahwan: How to trust machines?
Machine intelligence plays a growing role in our lives. Today, machines recommend things to us, such as news, music, and household products. They trade in our stock markets and optimize our transportation and logistics. How do we ensure that these machines will be trustworthy?
16.12.2020
Tilman Santarius: Making digitalisation work for the climate!
Digitalisation is one of the biggest transformation processes of our time - everyone agrees on that. But what does it mean in concrete terms for ecology and social justice? What opportunities and risks does digitalisation hold for sustainability?
26.10.2020
Joanna Bryson: The role of humans in an age of intelligent machines
Artificial intelligence (AI) and the information age are bringing us more information about ourselves and each other than any society has ever known. What are the limits of AI? Of intelligence and humanity more broadly? What are our ethical obligations to machines?
25.05.2020
Livestream: Philipp Staab – The crises of digital capitalism
For around 50 years, digital technologies have been the key to economic transformation. However, it is only since the late 1990s that we have begun to see the emergence of a genuinely digital capitalism with the commercial Internet at its core.
27.04.2020
Cancelled: Lina Dencik – Justice in the Datafied Society
Cancellation of the event due to COVID-19 Due to the immediate measures decided on 11...
23.03.2020
Sybille Krämer: Cultural history of digitisation
It is often assumed that digitisation and computer technology are inseparably linked. However, digitality is...
13.02.2020
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen: The power of platforms and how publishers adapt
Today, more people follow the news via platform companies like Facebook and Google than via any news organisation in human history, and smaller platforms like Twitter serve news to more people than all but the biggest publishers.
16.12.2019
Shoshana Zuboff: Surveillance Capitalism and Democracy
The collection and analysis of data is changing the way economies operate. Are these changes so fundamental that they can be said to have led to the emergence of a new form of capitalism – surveillance capitalism?
06.11.2019
Armin Nassehi: What problem does digitalisation solve?
Digital technology has revolutionised the world in just a few years: our relationships, our work...
28.08.2019
Louise Amoore: Our lives with algorithms
From detecting anomalies in the landscape of medical images to drone footage to the influencing...
01.07.2019
José van Dijck: Europe and responsible platform societies
The growing pains of digitisation involve intense struggles between competing ideological systems and contesting societal...
05.06.2019
Dirk Baecker: Digitalisation and the next society
A new era in human society is beginning with digital media. While language, writing and...
16.04.2019
Eva Illouz: Capitalist subjectivity and the internet
In her lecture, Eva Illouz takes a closer look at the dating app Tinder. In...
06.03.2019
Andreas Reckwitz: Digitalisation and society of singularities
The late-modern society produces singularities. It does no longer aim at the general, standardized...
11.12.2018
Nick Couldry: Colonised by data – the hollowing out of digital society
The current datafication of society not only brings about another iteration of capitalism, but also...
20.11.2018
Stephen Graham: The politics of urban digital infrastructures
Already more than half of the world’s population lives in cities – and this number...
24.09.2018
Marion Fourcade: Social order in the digital society
Modern institutions, both public and private, rely on tools and procedures that track individuals, assess...
07.05.2018
Elena Esposito: Future and uncertainty in the digital society
What does knowing through algorithms and AI mean? How does AI shift our understanding and production of knowledge?
12.03.2018
Christoph Neuberger: Democracy and public sphere in the digital society
What happens with our central democratic values like freedom, equality and truth in the digital...
30.01.2018
Manuel Castells: Power and counter-power in the digital society
How is power constituted in the digital society? Who is powerful – and how can...
12.12.2017
DIGITAL SOCIETY COMPENDIUM
This compendium provides a collection of current research on digitalisation and society. It is based on the lecture series.
DIGITALER SALON
Once a month we publicly discuss the impact of digitalisation on the society. Therefore we invite special guests and engage in a dialogue with the audience.
NEWSLETTER
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