PUBLIC TALK: Emerging technologies: towards responsible, ethical futures

A public lecture by Professor Sarah Pink, Professor of Design (Media Ethnography), RMIT and UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

Self-driving cars, screenless technologies, digital assets, self tracking, automation and data - such emerging technologies are often represented through utopian or dystopian narratives that portray them as part of a future in which human society will be strongly impacted by technological change.

In this lecture Professor Pink will discuss the role of the social sciences both as critical voice in the debates around our futures with emerging technologies, and in an interventional mode of engagement and inquiry in technology futures as they play out. Having conducted ethnographic research into each of the technologies listed above, she will discuss the significant role the social sciences can play in determining how the possible futures implied by emerging technologies are imagined, envisioned and enabled, all of which opens up and deepens contributions towards responsible and ethical technological futures.