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Making sense of the digital society

The rapidly advancing digital transformation of our society gives rise to many uncertainties and generates challenges at a wide variety of levels. There is a need for explanations that help us better understand the digital processes that shape our present and future.

Since 2017, the Making sense of the digital society lecture series has been developing an European perspective on the current transformation processes. In these lectures, top-class thinkers address the groundbreaking questions of digitalisation and its impact on our social life. The lecture series is a cooperation between the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) and the German Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb).

Latest lecture

Date/TimeEvent
19.09.2023
19:00 - 21:00
Lorenz Hilty & James Maguire: Digitising the environmental paradigm
Urania Berlin, Berlin Berlin

How to use the compendium?

As a knowledge base, this digital compendium creates a comprehensive overview of current research on digital society and can be used for various educational activities. For a better overview, we have grouped the recordings of the individual lectures into seven major cluster topics, which provide an overview of the diverse content related to digitalisation. For each cluster, we have recorded and produced a podcast episode that contextualizes the respective topic with excerpts from individual presentations as well as additional explanations and background discussions. In addition, further material from blog posts, journal articles and podcast episodes from the HIIG cosmos provide a complementary insight into the current discourse on digital transformation.

Contact

Thomas Christian Bächle, Dr.

Head of research programme: The evolving digital society

Recordings of the lecture series

Find all lectures in full length on YouTube.

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FURTHER OER AT HIIG

HIIG is continuously developing a wide range of OER, including a lecture series, a future thinking toolkit and several games.

Cooperation partners


Cluster

Digital society

The digitalisation of our world is bringing about a multitude of changes in our society: From the way we handle data to our social system to our economic and social order. What do these developments mean for fundamental principles such as equality and fairness?  How can we understand the use of technologies that are becoming increasingly efficient but less accessible?

Cluster

Democracy and the public

Digitalisation is transforming public life and politics, just like social and political communication - what developments are these changes leading to? How are our basic democratic values, the flow of information and political participation evolving?

Cluster

Platform governance

From the flow of news to the financial market, our lives are influenced on a wide variety of levels by the use and impact of platforms. How do these platforms work and is it possible to regulate them? What effective control and legislative mechanisms exist?

Cluster

Digital economy

Digital technologies and platform models are fundamentally changing our economic system. The processing and use of our data through digitalisation has led to new forms of revenue and economic models and thus to new power structures and a new form of capitalism.

Cluster

Artificial intelligence and algorithms

Artificial intelligence and algorithms are influencing our lives in unprecedented ways. Therefore, it is more important than ever to understand the mechanisms behind these developments and to address ethical issues of AI

Cluster

Infrastructures of the digitalisation

Digital technologies and processes are an increasingly important aspect of our society's infrastructure. What social values do they embody and how can we use digitalisation for sustainability and the climate?

Cluster

Digital pasts and digital futures

In order to understand the impact of digitalisation on our society, it helps to look to the past to understand the development of digitalisation and digitisation as part of cultural history. At the same time, by considering future scenarios, we can recognize our current responsibility for helping to shape the digital society.

Cluster

Digital society

The digitalisation of our world is bringing about a multitude of changes in our society: From the way we handle data to our social system to our economic and social order. What do these developments mean for fundamental principles such as equality and fairness?  How can we understand the use of technologies that are becoming increasingly efficient but less accessible?

 

Cluster

Platform governance

From the flow of news to the financial market, our lives are influenced on a wide variety of levels by the use and impact of platforms. How do these platforms work and is it possible to regulate them? What effective control and legislative mechanisms exist?

Cluster

Digital economy

Digital technologies and platform models are fundamentally changing our economic system. The processing and use of our data through digitalisation has led to new forms of revenue and economic models and thus to new power structures and a new form of capitalism.

Cluster

Infrastructures of the digitalisation

Digital technologies and processes are an increasingly important aspect of our society's infrastructure. What social values do they embody and how can we use digitalisation for sustainability and the climate?

Cluster

Digital pasts and digital futures

In order to understand the impact of digitalisation on our society, it helps to look to the past to understand the development of digitalisation and digitisation as part of cultural history. At the same time, by considering future scenarios, we can recognize our current responsibility for helping to shape the digital society.