On March 22 and 23 2018 together with prof. dr. Justus Uitermark, I organized an international seminar at the University of Amsterdam with the purpose to use the insights of cybernetics to come to terms with the digital world of today. How can we reconcile the classic liberal idea of human autonomy with a world in which the boundaries between humans, machines and nature are increasingly blurred? What happens to democracy in a world where human decision-making is more and more shaped by machines?

The seminar involved a day of discussions between scholars from fields as diverse as Philosophy, Anthropology, and Artificial Intelligence, and ended with an evening, open to the larger public, with a theatrical performance.

The seminar was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) as part of the research project “Safeguarding long-term stakeholdership in Smart Cities” and by the Center for Urban Studies of the University of Amsterdam as part of a collaboration with the Sheffield Urban Automation Institute.

Click here for an overview of the program and speakers.