http://www.bard.edu/hannaharendtcenter/conference2010/
Whether it is computer trading programs on Wall Street, robotic voices in customer service centers, algorithms that guide shopping and social networking on the internet, drones dropping bombs in war zones, or even the use of computers to enhance art, we all realize that our lives, our aspirations, and our accomplishments are increasingly set...
[read more]
http://www.bard.edu/hannaharendtcenter/conference2010/
Whether it is computer trading programs on Wall Street, robotic voices in customer service centers, algorithms that guide shopping and social networking on the internet, drones dropping bombs in war zones, or even the use of computers to enhance art, we all realize that our lives, our aspirations, and our accomplishments are increasingly set into patterns and evaluated by measures controlled by machines that can calculate and reason at a superhuman--and thus an inhuman--level. Our lives and our world are increasingly subject to an non-human intelligence.
In addition, as machines take over more and more of the basic tasks of our lives, what place will humans have in the world? Will the majority of humanity become superfluous, as Hannah Arendt worried 50 years ago and as Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems has worried recently?
This conference asks: how can and how ought humans be, as humans, in such a world.
http://www.bard.edu/hannaharendtcenter/conference2010/