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RSIS Seminar by Prof Jean Bogais on 19 Nov



Event Date 19 Nov 2018 (Mon), 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Venue The KeyPoint, RSIS (Location Map)
Organiser Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre) (Email : issschiam@ntu.edu.sg  Tel/Fax : 67905490)


Event Info

The separation of human from the artefactual marks a fundamental critical juncture between the Age we are entering and all other scientific Ages and human generations that have come before. One day, knowledge that was previously sovereign to humanity may also be non-human and non-natural (as in nanotechnology); vested in some form of (Quantum) Artificial intelligence.

As a race for knowledge and control is heating up and power gaps are certain to widen between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of technology, some important questions emerge.

  • Will the benefits of new technologies in the hands of the ‘haves’ be transferred or made available to the ‘haves-nots’? And how? Or could we ever return - in the future - to a feudal system in a world struggling to sustain its own existence in the midst of an increasing population and out-of-control climate transformation?
  • Will technology be a driver of peace, war or, most likely, a complex combination of both? Will our modes of thinking be able to keep pace, when change itself becomes subject to the ambiguities of technological uncertainties?

Technological revolution therefore poses significant ethical and moral implications that is potentially global in scope and practically infinite in scale. This seminar will posit that technology could bring the decomposition of social structures and/or the disappearance of social distinctions introducing social entropy as a feature of natural decay within a social system.



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