“Life in the Digital Time Machine”

The convergence between abundant data, unprecedented computational power and 2nd generation algorithms trained by neural networks and Deep Learning procedures boosts the current digital transformation which pervades our societies and economies and upsets the geopolitical order. It also alters our individual and collective temporal experience and intensifies the temporal complexity of the present. The crucial mechanism in building a digital time machine is the predictive power of algorithms which connects traces from the past with trajectories projected into the future. We cannot escape the present which becomes ever more dense with multiple temporalities intersecting. I will explore some of the potential implications of what life in the digital time machine may mean for us.

Helga Nowotny is Professor emerita of Science and Technology Studies, ETH Zurich, and a founding member of the European Research Council. In 2007 she was elected ERC Vice President and from March 2010 until December 2013 President of the ERC. Currently she is Chair of the ERA Council Forum Austria, member of the Austrian Council and Vice-President of the Council for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. She is also Visiting Professor at NTU Singapore. Among other, Helga is Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and continues to serve on many international advisory boards in Austria and throughout Europe. She has published widely in Science and Technology Studies, STS, and on social time. Throughout her professional career, Helga Nowotny has been engaged in science and innovation policy matters and continues to serve as advisor at national and EU level.

Helga Nowotny has published more than 300 articles in scientific journals. Her latest book (in German) is Eigenzeit Revisited in Zeit der Algorithmen. Her previous books include The Cunning of Uncertainty, that was featured by the Financial Times on the list of the best books 2015; Naked Genes, Reinventing the human in the molecular age, (with Giuseppe Testa), MIT Press, 2011, Insatiable Curiosity, Innovation in a Fragile Future, MIT Press, 2008, and Cultures of Technology and the Quest for Innovation (ed.), New York and London, 2006.

**Lunch Reception will be held at 1:00pm, after the lecture**