Democracy is not a matter of course. The number of autocratic states is increasing worldwide – and digitization is sometimes contributing to this. Representatives from politics, business and society will discuss this from October 11 to 15, 2022 in lectures and discussions under the motto “Uncontrolled power: From trend to autocracy” during the Hannah Arendt Days (HAT) in Hanover. Heise-Verlag is a cooperation partner and host of a lecture on the digital measurement of people.
For the Hanover-born political theorist Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), communicative power was one of the most important elements of politics. Long before the Internet, she was convinced of the particular importance of networking for political action.
Opening, registration and blog
The opening lecture “Basic European values: No democracy without the rule of law!” will be given by the Vice-President of the European Parliament, Dr. Katarina Barley, October 11th at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover. Panel discussions and the opening of an exhibition in the Hanover Central Library will follow over the next few days. IGS Roderbruch students have set up a blog called “Yellowpost”. The entire program of the Hannah Arendt Days can be viewed online. Registrations are possible until October 5, 2022.
Lecture in the Heise-Verlag
Medienhaus Heise on Karl-Wiechert-Allee is hosting a lecture by Prof. Dr. Simon Hegelich under the title “The digital measurement of man: on the way to a new totalitarianism?”. This will take place on Thursday, October 13th at 7 p.m. Human actions can be calculated in advance from collected data. A social credit system that brings this data together and evaluates it with artificial intelligence creates a new picture of dystopian rule. Simon Hegelich is Professor of Political Data Science at the Technical University of Munich. The event will also be broadcast live.
The topic is highly topical, says the deputy editor-in-chief of voonze online, Jürgen Kuri: “After all, we have to deal with fake news, digital propaganda campaigns and fake news that authoritarian systems use to infiltrate democracies every day. Then there are the technical means, the autocracies are available today and enable control, monitoring and preparation to an unprecedented extent.For us at voonze online, the topic to which Prof. Dr. Simon Hegelich is dedicated is by no means just a specter, but an occasion for analysis and information that human action, identity and ultimately the value of a person can be predicted from their data and using artificial intelligence combines naïve technological optimism with a blindness to totalitarian endeavours.”
The Hannah Arendt Days are an event of the Lower Saxony state capital Hanover and will be funded by the Lower Saxony Foundation in 2022. This year’s cooperation partners are the Volkswagen Foundation and voonze online. Digital topics have also been the focus of previous events in the series, for example in 2017 when algorithms in the public sector were discussed.
(mki)
