Lecture by ZeMKI Member Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp at the Conference "Technisierung von Wissen" in Chemnitz

ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp will give a lecture entitled: “The Knowledge of Technologized Futures: Pioneering Communities, Artificial Intelligence and Sustainability” on 18.03.2024 at the conference “Technization of Knowledge” at Chemnitz University.
The conference explores the question of how and with which concepts current experiences of technologized social reality(ies) and processes of the technologization of knowledge can be described, understood and explained in terms of their genesis, preconditions and consequences.
The lecture will take place as part of the fourth panel “Imaginations of digital futures” (13-14:30).

Abstract:
Since the 1970s, our ideas of how we imagine technologized futures have been shaped by pioneering communities, especially from and with reference to Silicon Valley: The Whole Earth Network has, among other things, provided ideas on how to better organize coexistence with “virtual communities” – and the network has contributed significantly to the fact that “labs” are considered the place where “being digital” is emerging in the present. The Artificial Intelligence Movement has been talking about the possibility of replacing humans with digital machines since the 1980s. The design of a surveying society was driven forward by the quantified self movement, that of a new, decentralized economy with close links to a redifined craft by the maker movement. And today’s imaginations of the use of technologies for a more sustainable society can not only be traced back to the Whole Earth Network, but are currently supported by the Solarpunk movement.

But what exactly are these pioneering communities? How do they relate to each other? What characterizes their designs for technologized futures? And why do they have such an importance in newly awakened social discourses about possible futures? In my lecture, I would like to address these questions and show that, if we look at knowledge about technologized futures, we almost inevitably end up with pioneering communities.

To the conference program
To the conference website