Image: VOLKER Weihbold
How will new technologies, such as the rapidly developing artificial intelligence, change our society? Can financial crises also be an opportunity from which an economy can emerge stronger and more sustainable? Questions like these are the focus of the new interdisciplinary “School of Social Sciences and Humanities” (SSSH) at Linz’s Johannes Kepler University (JKU).
“Social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have changed the public discourse, indeed the public as a whole,” said JKU Rector Meinhard Lukas at the opening of the SSSH on Monday evening. Such transformations would have to be explored. With the SSSH, the JKU wants to become a pioneer in this field. It is important that the JKU, which was deliberately founded as a university for social and economic sciences, sets an exclamation mark right now.
The guest speaker was the German philosopher, author and former Minister of State for Culture, Julian Nida-Rümelin, who gave a lecture on the subject of “Digitization and Democracy” to 120 invited guests.
According to Nida-Rümelin, the threat to democracy posed by digitization lies in the global monopoly held by US technology companies from Silicon Valley, the “Big Five”. “We need a public digital infrastructure that follows a non-commercial logic,” concluded the philosopher.
According to Dean Helmut Pernsteiner, the SSSH will conduct research from different perspectives – for example from a political science, philosophical or sociological perspective.
Source: Nachrichten
