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Town Hall Seattle: Science Series

Town Hall’s Science series is dedicated to understanding the world around us. Whether we’re hearing from a legendary physicist or a UW graduate student, the Science series explores math, biology, chemistry, the environment, and so much more.

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Nov 5, 2018

As our technological capabilities expand, humanity finds ourselves confronting one of the most important questions of our time: how will digital technology transform our society? Author and speaker Jamie Susskind steps up to Town Hall’s stage to address this pressing question with perspectives from his book Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech.

Susskind argued that rapid and relentless innovation in a range of technologies—from artificial intelligence to virtual reality—will increasingly control us if left unchecked, setting the limits of our liberty and defining what is forbidden. He called for a fundamental change in the way we think about politics as informed by inexorably advancing technologies (and their controllers) that will come to hold great power over us. Some will gather data about our lives, causing us to avoid conduct perceived as shameful, sinful, or wrong.

Others will filter our perception of the world, choosing what we know, affecting how we feel, and shaping what we think. Susskind called us together for a critical discussion of what it means for a political system to be just or democratic under the shadow of a digital-first era—and a meditation on the ways in which we can, and must, regain control.

Recorded live at The Summit by Town Hall Seattle on Monday, October 22, 2018.