On starting with ‘artificial intelligence’ and arriving at ‘existential risks’, 19th-21st century: From local engine ‘explosions’ and regional network ‘instability’ to global environmental ‘unsustainability’.
Join us in the STS Seminar Room (Universitätsstraße 7/Stiege II/6. Stock (NIG) 1010 Vienna) or online via zoom (Meeting ID: 632 5148 9007, Passcode: 789205).
Abstract
The presentation will seek to contextualize the emergence of the so called ‘existential risks’ (also called ‘existential threats’) by offering a long-run history of technology-related risks. As the argument goes, key to this history is, first, the wide-spread phenomenon of steam engine ‘explosions’ at the start of industrial capitalism (up to the first half of the nineteenth century), and, then, alongside the connection of steam engines to long distance energy transmission lines and networks of lines (throughout the first half of the twentieth century), the emergence of the phenomenon of line/network ‘instability’.
Biography
Aristotle Tympas, a specialist in the study of technology from the humanities and the social sciences, works as professor at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, School of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His studies combined engineering (MSc, Aristotelio University, 1989), technology and science policy (MSc, Georgia Tech, 1995) and history-sociology of technology (PhD, Georgia Tech, 2001). Former chair (2017-2019) of the management committee of the ‘Tensions of Europe: Research Network on History, Technology and Europe’, Tympas currently serves as vice president of the International Master’s Programme on Society, Science and Technology (ESST), as director of the Interdepartmental Graduate Program ‘Science, Technology, Society—Science and Technology Studies’ and as vice-chair of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (he served as department chair from 2020 to 2022). He has been a visiting scholar in the US (MIT Program in Science, Technology and Society), Germany (Viadrina Center B/Orders in Motion) and Sweden (Swedish Institute for Disability Research). He is the author of Calculation and Computation in the Pre-electronic Era (Springer, 2017) and Analog Labor, Digital Capital (Angelus Novus, 2018, In Greek).
