Who is tracking our online choices and behaviour? Curating our content, pushing our buttons, deciding what we get to see and how we’ll react? Guiding us like obedient zombies on a path all planned out by algorithms?
Trying to resist the power of social media algorithms on your own is a tough task. Exploring your options together is a more hopeful one. Tonight we’ll investigate what choices you can (and perhaps already do) make to protect yourself and your autonomy. Meet students, professionals, and intellectuals to examine each other’s perspectives and experiences with the online world.
Warnings from teachers, scientists, governments, doctors, and parents aren’t slowing anyone down. The glow of a screen is too powerful to resist. What do we see and hear there? Who do we listen to? Their messages bleed through into our speech, our relationships, our votes, our willingness to obey and to believe. Let’s break down the illusory division between digital and “real” life and ask ourselves: how are our digital lives influencing our minds?
At 19:00 we start our evening with pizza. Walk in, have a slice and get to know your fellow audience members in an informal setting.
At 19:30 we will kick off the programme, and wrap up at 21:00hrs.
Speakers:
Ivana Ivković is a political philosopher born and raised in former Yugoslavia. She analyzes firsthand how political upheaval reshapes meanings and identities. Ivana teaches philosophy, addressing contemporary political issues such as citizenship, the transformation of public space, and populism through accessible yet rigorous philosophical frameworks.
Daniëlle Arets is a lecturer in Designing Journalism at Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Tilburg. Drawing on her background as a design researcher, she works with teams to apply design research methods to current journalistic challenges in the digital age.
Critical Mass – Studium Generale
How does our society work? Why is it the way that it is? Hey – and if we don’t like it, what can we do about it? Critical Mass is Studium Generale’s experimental space at Theater de Veste. We bring in experts to unpick society’s biggest problems. Then it’s over to you. Can you apply what you’ve just learned? Work with other audience members to solve a specially designed challenge. Maybe together, you can change the world.
