Achtung Informatization! The Information Society and its Challenges
Tuesday, February 4, 2014 at 12:22PM Achtung Informatization! The Information Society and its Challenges
Professor Alistair Duff
Faculty of Engineering, Computing & Creative Industries
We find ourselves in an Information Age. A dynamic, disruptive force of informatization is changing the way we live and propelling us headlong into an information society. That much is obvious, but we don’t necessarily grasp its principles properly and aren’t always making the right decisions about it.
In this lecture, Alistair Duff will look back at the origins of the Information Age, and then forward at some of the main challenges that are emerging. The information society presents us with numerous policy challenges, and Alistair's focus will be on three: information poverty, individual privacy, and the future of the Fourth Estate.
The lecture will report recent fieldwork among homeless, information-deprived men in Edinburgh, the hidden casualties of informational capitalism. It will then address another huge information issue: the threat to privacy. President Obama calls us the Facebook Generation, but social networks and other, more sinister, trends are leading to a breakdown in privacy norms. Is there now a genuine danger of technocracy, even totalitarianism? Read more...
The lecture will be followed by a networking drinks reception.
Thursday 27 March 2014
6pm - 7pm
The Lindsay Stewart Lecture Theatre
Craiglockhart Campus
RSVP
The lecture is free but please register your attendance to lectures@napier.ac.uk.