METAMORPHOSES: TALKING TECHNOLOGY

Special Lecture

 

Beyond Techno-Narcissim: Self & Other in the Internet Public Realm

Speaker: Prof. Langdon Winner, Thomas Phelan Chair of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York

 

Chair: Amb. Vijay K. Nambiar, formerly UN Secretary General's Special Advisor on Myanmar

 

Expectations that the internet would provide a suitable place for the flourishing of democracy have recently encountered some grave setbacks. The rise of monopoly control within platforms of communication has greatly magnified the economic and political power of oligarchies.  Techniques for harvesting personal data to fuel targeted “computational propaganda” threaten to undermine the integrity of elections and to erode citizen confidence that their outcomes are fair.  While both roots and possible remedies for these maladies exist within large institutions, the erosion of democracy may have origins closer to home - in the activities and experience of selfhood on the Net

 

(Collaboration: Niti Aayog; and Centre for Policy Research)