The
Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) and the
Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) invite you to a lecture by Andreas Reckwitz at the Jazz Institute Berlin. The lecture addresses the question of to what extent digitisation creates social singularisation. It is part of the lecture series
"Making Sense of Digital Society".
The late-modern society produces singularities. It does no longer aim at the general, standardized and average solely, but promotes and expects uniqueness. Things, individuals, events, places and communities – everything wants to be special… The result is a competition of attention and evaluation for the status of this uniqueness, the so-called singularity. The result: there are losers and winners. Digital technologies, such as social media platforms and smartphones, are a necessary condition of the process. Andreas Reckwitz asks in his lecture on the society of singularities: To what extent can digitalisation be interpreted as a mechanism of social singularisation and what are the consequences?
Andreas Reckwitz is Professor of Comparative Cultural Sociology at the European University Viadrina. His works are large-scale sociological studies on social tendencies such as subjectivation, aestheticisation or singularisation. Most recently published books are The Invention of Creativity (Polity Press 2017) and Ästhetik und Gesellschaft (Suhrkamp 2015), while at the end of 2017 the book Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten (Suhrkamp) was published, which examines digitisation as a mechanism of social change. From April to July 2019 Reckwitz is Thomas Mann Fellow at the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles.
Following this lecture, Jeanette Hofmann, Director of the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Thomas Krüger, President of the bpb, and Andreas Reckwitz discuss in which digital society we want to live: What action potential remains in the digital world in times of increasing monopolisation and data collection? How can we as a society bring about change and where do we need new political impulses? In short: How can we shape the transformation?
Registration
If you are interested in participating in this event, please register
here.
Agenda
6:30 p.m. Doors open
7:00 p.m. – 7:15 p.m. Welcome and Introduction
7:15 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Digitalisierung und Gesellschaft der Singularitäten [Digitalisation and the Society of Singularities], Andreas Reckwitz (European University Viadrina)
8:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Panel Discussion and Questions from the Audience
9:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. Get-Together
