We appear to live in a catastrophic age. Our lives are caught between climate change, pandemics, wars, market crashes, the collapse of biodiversity and the disruption of supply chains. The response to such disruption is increasingly to be found in ubiquitous computing and technoutopianism. Today digital systems sustain virtually every aspect of a functioning society, from supply chains, security, labour, vaccine development, public health and virtually every manner of social life. Nowhere has this link become more powerful than at the intersection of statistics, ecology, artificial intelligence and finance. Orit Halpern labels this condition the “smartness mandate”, an ideological figuration that has political and ethical implications for our present time, underpinning reactionary politics and increased economic precarity. In her keynote, Halpern disentangles the historical roots of this mandate and helps us to see the many ways in which smartness has come to dominate contemporary life. By doing so, she cuts to the heart of The Curse of Smooth Operations: the drive towards ever better functionality that permeates our society leaves it in a state of utter dysfunction.

Read more about the programme: https://impakt.nl/festival/2022/keyno...

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