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[Human Being in an Inhuman Age] Photo credit: Photo credit: Metropolis (1927 Germany), directed by Fritz Lang. Shown: The Robot/Brigitte Helm Credit: UFA/Photofest copyright UFA
Photo credit: Photo credit: Metropolis (1927 Germany), directed by Fritz Lang. Shown: The Robot/Brigitte Helm Credit: UFA/Photofest copyright UFA

Science, Technology, and Society Program, Human Rights Project, and Hannah Arendt Center present:

Human Being in an Inhuman Age

Third Annual Arendt Center Conference

Friday, October 22, 2010 – Saturday, October 23, 2010
Bard College Campus

  • Overview
  • Program
  • Speakers
  • Video

Program

10:30 am
Sosnoff Theatre
Fisher Center

Welcoming Remarks

Roger Berkowitz, Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Ethical and Political Thinking


11:00 am
Sosnoff Theatre
Fisher Center

Keynote: Ray Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil is an American inventor (the Kurzweil Synthesizer and the Kurzweil Reader are two of his more famous inventions) and futurist. He has authored 6 best-selling book on health and artifcial intelligence. His latest book is the bestseller, The Singularity is Near. His website is KurzweilAI.net.

Discussant Leon Botstein

1:00 pm
Manor House Lunch

2:00 pm
Olin Auditorium David Rothenberg
Concert: The Wilderness in the Machine

2:30 pm
Olin Auditorium

Panel One: Is it Important to Maintain a Distinction between Humans and Machines?

Thomas Dumm is professor of Political Science at Amherst College..
Jane Bennett is Chair of the Political Science Department at Johns Hopkins University.
Kathleen Jones is Professor Emerita of Women's Studies and San Diego State University.
Discussant Davide Panagia

4:15 pm
Break

4:30 pm
Olin Auditorium

Panel Two: Are Automation and the Coming Post-Scarcity Economy Making Humans Superfluous?

Jerome Kohn is Trustee of the Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust and Director of the Hannah Arendt Center at The New School University
David S. Rose is the Track Chair for Finance, Entrepreneurship and Economics at Singularity University, the Google-sponsored post-graduate program dealing with the effects of exponentially advancing technology.
Drucilla Cornell is Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University and Director of the Ubuntu Project. .
Discussant, Tracy Strong.

6:15 pm
Break

6:30 pm
Olin Auditorium

Keynote: Sherry Turkle
Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. Her many books include: Life on Screen; The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, and most recently, Simulation and Its Discontents.

Discussant, Thomas Bartscherer

8:00 pm
Dinner for Speakers.

Non-Participants should avail themselves of the Hudson Valley's fantastic culinary Culture. Reservations recommended.



Saturday, Oct. 23

10:30 am

Keynote: Can Robots Behave More Humanely in the Battlefield than Humans?
Ron Arkin is Regents' Professor, Associate Dean for Research in the College of Computing, and the Director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Discussant Tom Keenan

11:30 am
Olin Auditorium

Panel Three: Will Machines Realize Their Potential as the Masters of Man?

Jean-Gabriel Ganascia is Professor of computer science at Paris VI University.
Babette Babich is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University..
James Hughes is Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and a Lecturer at Trinity College.
Discussant Greg Moynahan

1:00 pm
Olin Auditorium

Lunch

1:30-2:30
Lunchtime Conversation:
WITH: Being in the Networked Age

Heather Gold tours as a comedian, performer, and speaker at venues like SXSW, Web 2.0, and Personal Democracy Forum. She is the host of The Heather Gold Show.
Discussant Benjamin Stevens

2:30 pm
Olin Auditorium

Panel Four: Is Art Human? The Fate of Art in the Age of Machines.

Nicholson Baker is a critically acclaimed and best selling author of novels like The Anthologist and non-fiction books like Human Smoke.
David Rothenberg is a Musician, composer, author and philosopher-naturalist. He is the author of many books including Why Birds Sing and Thousand Mile Song.
Wyatt Mason is critic, essayist, and journalist who writes frequently forThe New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and similar publications.
Discussant. Ann Lauterbach

4:00 pm

Break

4:15 pm
Olin Auditorium

Keynote: Marianne Constable

Marianne Constable is Zaffaroni Family Chair in Undergraduate Education and Professor of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Her latest book is Just Silences: The Limits and Possibilities of Modern Law

Discussant Noah Chasin

5:15 pm
Olin Auditorium

Panel Five: How Should we Imagine Human Beings in an Inhuman Age?

William Connolly is a political theorist and the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. .
Rob Riemen is author of Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal.
Discussant, Gilles Peress

6:30 pm
Dinner

8:00 pm
AMERICAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
The orchestra's first concert of the 2010–11 season features Beethoven's majestic Sixth Symphony ("Pastorale") and Rachmaninoff's rarely performed First Piano Concerto.

Leon Botstein, Conducting


Speakers

Ron Arkin is Regents' Professor, Associate Dean for Research in the College of Computing, and the Director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory  at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His most recent book is Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Systems. 

Babette Babich is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University and Executive Editor of New Nietzsche Studies.  She is author of many books, including Nietzsche's Philosophy of Science. 

Nicholson Baker
 is a critically acclaimed and best selling author of novels like The Anthologist and non-fiction books like Human Smoke. He is also a frequent essayist, having written about Wikipedia, Google, the Kindle, and card catalogues for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and other publications. 

Thomas Bartscherer is Assistant Professor of Humanities at Bard College where he is Director of the Program in Language and Thinking. He is the editor, with Roderick Coover, ofSwitching Codes, among other books. 

Seyla Benhabib is Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science, Yale University. She is author of The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt and, most recently, Another Cosmopolitianism. 

Jane Bennett is Chair of the Political Science Department at Johns Hopkins University. Her most recent book is Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things.

Roger Berkowitz is Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Ethical and Political Thinking at Bard College. He co-edited for the Arendt Center Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics. He is the author of The Gift of Science.

Leon Botstein is President of Bard College, Conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra and the Jerusalem Philharmonic. He is author of Jefferson's Children: Education and The Promise of American Culture, among many other books and CDs. 

Noah Chasin is a professor of Art History at Bard College. 

William Connolly
 is a political theorist and the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speedand Pluralism, among many other books. 

Marianne Constable is Zaffaroni Family Chair in Undergraduate Education and Professor of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Her latest book is Just Silences: The Limits and Possibilities of Modern Law. (Keynote speaker)

Drucilla Cornell is Professor of Political science, Comparative Literature and Women's Studies at Rutgers University and holds visiting professorships in Pretoria and London. She is the author of many books including the  Moral Images of Freedom. 

Thomas Dumm is professor of Political Science at Amherst College. His most recent book is Loneliness as a Way of Life.

Heather Gold is tours North America as a comedian, speaker, and solo performer. She has keynoted at Web 2.0 and is host of The Heather Gold Show. 

James Hughes is Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and a Lecturer at Trinity College. He is the author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future.

Jean-Gabriel Ganascia is Professor of computer science at Paris VI University. His most recent book is Voir et Pouvoir: qui nous surveille?

Kathleen Jones is professor Emerita of Women's Studies and Director of the 2010 NEH Summer Seminar on Hannah Arendt. Author of Living Between Danger and Love. She is currently writing How the Heart Knows: A Thinking Journey With Hannah Arendt.

Thomas Keenan is Director, Human Rights Project and Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Bard College. He is the author of Fables of Responsibility.

Jerome Kohn is Trustee of the Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust and editor of the following volumes of Arendt's unpublished and uncollected writings: The Promise of Politics, Essays on Understanding 1930-1954, Responsibility and Judgment, and The Jewish Writings (with Ron Feldman).  

Ray Kurzweil is an American  inventor (the Kurzweil Synthesizer and the Kurzweil Reader are two of his more famous inventions) and futurist. He has authored 6 best-selling books on health and artifcial intelligence. His latest book is the bestseller, The Singularity is Near. His website is KurzweilAI.net. (Keynote Speaker)

Ann Lauterbach is a poet whose most recent book, Or To Begin Again, was nominated for the National Book Award. She is currently a David and Ruth Schwab II Professor of Language and Literature at Bard.

Wyatt Mason's writing for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Harpers has earned him  the National Book Critics Circle Citation for criticism. He is also a Contributing writer for The New York TImes Magazine and translator of the works of Rimbaud for The Modern Library. 

Greg Moynahan
 is Co-director, Science, Technology, and Society Program and Professor of History at Bard College. 

Davide Panagia is a political and cultural theorist who holds the Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies at Trent University. He is the Co-Editor of Theory & Event, and author of, most recently, The Political Life of Sensation. 

Gilles Peress
 is a photographer who has chronicled many of the most intense human rights crises of the last 30 years and Visiting Professor of Human Rights and Photography at Bard College. His many books include: The Graves: Srebrenica and Vukovar and  The Silence.

Rob Riemen is the Founder, President, and CEO of the Nexus Instituut and author of Nobility of Spirit.

David Rose is the Track Chair for Finance, Entrepreneurship and Economics at Singularity University, the Google-sponsored post-graduate program dealing with the effects of exponentially advancing technology.

David Rothenberg 
is a Musician, composer, author and philosopher-naturalist. He is the author of many books including Why Birds Sing  and Thousand Mile Song and has produced a number of CD's featuring his music with animals and nature, including "On the Cliffs of the Heart."

Susan Silbey is Leon and Anne Goldberg Professor of Humanities  at MIT. She is editor of the multi-volume work Law and Science and co-author of The Common Place of Law.

Ben Stevens is professor of Classics at Bard College. 

Tracy Strong 
is Professor of Political Science at University of Californian, San Diego. He is author of many books, including Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration. Morehere.

Sherry Turkle
 is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. Her many books include:Life on Screen; The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, and most recently, Simulation and Its Discontents. (Keynote Speaker)


Video

https://vimeo.com/album/3298694
This event occurred on: 

On October  22-23, 2010, the Hannah Arendt Center for Ethical and Political Thinking at Bard College--along with the Human Rights Project and the Science, Technology, and Society Program--is hosting an international conference:

Human Being in an Inhuman Age

Go to the Conference Webpage.

Watch the Webcast of the Conference.
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