10.00-11.30

Brett Frischmann, Yeshiva University (USA) | SLIDES

Many people complain that technologies dehumanize. It is difficult, however, to know when a line has been crossed, when the social engineering has gone too far, when something meaningful has been lost. Do we know when technology replaces or diminishes our humanity? Can we detect when this happens? To begin to answer these questions, we would have to know what constitutes our humanity, what makes us human in the first place. And that turns out to be an incredibly difficult question, one that has been debated without resolution for millennia. Given such difficulty at the most foundational level, it should not be surprising that we do not have a reliable method for identifying and evaluating technological impacts on our humanity. Of course, people often claim that technologies dehumanize, especially in recent decades with the widespread adoption of computers, the Internet, and more recently, smartphones. But the public generally takes such claims to be alarmist, and so the claims remain untested and ultimately drowned out by rampant enthusiasm for new technology. Yet techno-social engineering of humans exists on an unprecedented scale and scope, and it is only growing more pervasive as we embed networked sensors in our public and private spaces, our devices, our clothing and ourselves.

Being Human in the Twenty First Century moves beyond the impasse and engages these fundamental questions in a fresh, intellectually rigorous, and conceptually exhilarating manner. The book develops a method to examine the dynamic relationship between humans and the technologies we develop and use. At its core, the method depends on a fundamental and radical repurposing of the Turing test, which is the test that Alan Turing famously proposed to examine whether a machine can think. Turing’s test examined the line between humans and machines, focusing on the machine side of the line and giving rise to the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning. This book examines the human side of the line. It uses machines as a baseline and asks when and how humans behave in a machine-like manner. It begins with different types of intelligence, but it does not end there. There is more to humanity than that. The method is extended to different capacities, such as the capacity to relate to others, as well as the core concepts of free will and autonomy. The radically repurposed Turing tests are plausible tests to employ, but more importantly, the tests serve as conceptual tools that enable a deeper consideration of what makes us human and how our humanity is reflected in and affected by the technologies we develop and use. Throughout the book, the concepts are grounded with familiar examples, such as call centers, the assembly line, public schools, online electronic contracting, wearable technologies, social media, and many others. The last two chapters directly focus on interconnected sensor networks, the Internet of Things, and (big) data enabled automation of systems around, about, on and in human beings.

11.45-13.15

Philippe Aigrain, Computer scientist and author (France)

10 years after my paper “Attention, Diversity and symmetry in a Many-to-Many Information Society” (*) and building on the more detailed work conducted for my book “Sharing: Culture and the Economy in the Internet Age” (**) I will revisit two key questions for the social and cultural impact of the Internet:

– How much is the attention given to works concentrated on some of them or spread on a wider variety of works and depending on which factors?

– What balance can be established between time allocated to expressing oneself and time allocated to “read / view / listen” expressions of others.

Specific attention will be given to textual and transmedia contents in addition to music and moving image.

* First Monday (11) 6, June 2006, http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1337/1257
** Amsterdam University Press, 2012, http://www.sharing-thebook.com/

14.30-16.00

Jean-Claude Guédon, University of Montreal (Canada) | SLIDES

Networked computers totally transform the modes of production, diffusion and reception of all categories of documents. They also affect preservation and retrieval. As a result, our documentary world is being totally reshaped. However, this recasting of the documentary sphere is not just technological: various actors holding specific forms of power are striving to locate and hold new forms of social and institutional positioning that will allow them to keep or even improve the degree of power they held in the print/radio/television/film world.

The case of scientific publishing offers a good opportunity to study this process: the Open Access movement, with its twists and turns, is being shaped by conflicting forces acting within the affordances of the Internet. Examining how it has evolved permits a better understanding of which forces are at work, and how they confront each other. It is a complex story that involves researchers, research institutions and their managers, subsidizing agencies or charities, private companies and governments. It affects private citizens, educators and decision makers.

16.15-17.45

Charles Nesson, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University (USA)

I will speak about the challenge of diversity in a socratic classroom. I will tell the story of Harvard Law School retiring its Royall shield in response to demands from Reclaim. I will explain the depressing effect of social conflict on classroom discourse and introduce you to an online modality that allows students in my class to engage in a synchronous pseudonymous threaded textual discussion in response to a prompt. This addition to the rhetorical modalities of the classroom facilitates forthright response from all students. Their articulation and sharing of ideas and responses on line invigorates ensuing face-to-face discussion in class.

11.30-12.30

Bruce Sterling, Science-fiction writer (USA), Jasmina Tešanovic , Activist and writer (Serbia)

Bruce Sterling will describe the developing technical trends in the Internet of Things, including vocal computing and single-use wireless buttons. Jasmina Tesanovic of “Casa Jasmina” will talk about the “Internet of Women Things and open source projects in the experimental domestic space for the Torino Fab Lab.