Chairs:

Professor Heather Horst https://www.sydney.edu.au/arch...

Professor Ned Rossiter https://www.westernsydney.edu....

Discussants:

Dr. Maren Koehler https://www.sydney.edu.au/arch...

Associate Professor Charles Barbour https://www.westernsydney.edu....

In this talk Orit Halpern will examine the historical relationship between the automation of decision making, freedom, and democracy after the 1970’s. Through an examination of financial technologies, economic thought, urban planning, and aesthetic practices, she will examine how concepts of democracy and intelligence were transformed through novel technical practices and ideas. She does so by tracing a historical genealogy of how freedom and democracy came to be linked to self-organizing, networked intelligences, and non-conscious decision making. Analogous to this development is also the shift to ideas of democracy and freedom as not averse too, but supported by, machinic decision-making in both people and machines.

Orit Halpern is Lighthouse Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures and Societal Change at Technische Universität Dresden. Her work bridges the histories of science, computing, and cybernetics with design. Her first book Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945 (Duke University Press, 2015) investigates histories of big data, design, and governmentality. Her second book The Smartness Mandate (with Robert Mitchell, MIT Press, 2023) is a genealogy of the current obsession with smart technologies and artificial intelligence. This event is co-hosted by the Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Sydney, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society and the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University.