Making Sense of the Digital Society

The current rapid social and technological change brings about enormous uncertainties – a great need for explanations and sense-making but also of shaping our common future. This high-profile lecture series thrives to develop a European perspective on the processes of transformation that our societies are currently undergoing. To this end, the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) and the German Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) are inviting great European thinkers to help us making sense of the digital society.

What is really changing in society beyond the hype of short-term excitement? What is power in the digital society, and how is it distributed? Do we witness the revival of democracy through increased participation and transparency, or rather its demise due to fragmentation and populism? Are services fueled by algorithms and artificial intelligence improving our private and business lives or do they enforce social inequalities? How does urban life change in times of digitization and what role do infrastructures take?

The lecture series started with an inaugural lecture by Manuel Castells, author of the highly influential Information Age-Trilogy and professor at the University of Southern California. Further lectures were held by Marion Fourcade, professor of sociology at the UC Berkeley, Christoph Neuberger, professor of communication studies at the LMU München and Elena Esposito, Professor for Sociology at the University of Bielefeld. Upcoming speakers are Stephen Graham, Professor of Cities and Society at the Newcastle University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape and Shoshana Zuboff, retired professor at the Harvard Business School and author of the upcoming book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.

All events in this series are held in English and translated simultaneously into German.

Events in this series