CfP: Technopolitics - Coimbra University, February 2023

INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM,  Português/English, 03 – 04 February, 2023. COIMBRA UNIVERSITY, PORTUGAL

Technopolitics is a follow up conference that intends to depart and expand the concept of Cyberpolitics to all the dimensions and effects of technology in our lives but placing politics at the center of debate and thought. Most investigation in the fields of Humanities have highlighted the impact of digitization and social virtualization and mapped the transition from industrial revolution, and mass disciplinary society, to the digital revolution, telework and social atomism. The fusion of disruptive technologies such as the so-called NBIC Technologies (Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno) is changing the fundamentals of our world almost roaming on its own towards a near future with unprecedented and unpredictable outcomes.
This new technological reason implies a rupture and a paradigm shift in the radical transition from an instrumental reason (auxiliary) to an autonomous reason (essential). This means the impossibility of further sustaining the illusion of technological neutrality. Beyond exploring what does the axiological non-neutrality of technology mean, the politics, or better, the Technopolitics shows now the perspective of the absolutism of technicality as a worldview. AI’s exponential progress hasn’t been duly addressed yet given its out-of-control development worldwide, soon it could have an agenda of its own leading to an eventual singleton of some kind, and the strategies explored until now to keep it in a box have been far from consensual, as has been the experts’ position on this: Should we let it develop in an open-source kind of environment where everybody has an influence on it (but from where also anyone can have danger access to, or on the other hand should we confine its regulated development to a specific number of chosen experts, a kind of committee elected by the UN as proposed by Nick Bostrom – and criticized by Ben Goertzel? One of these two directions might be the future of AI Governance.

Science, culture and technology appear to be merging and in combat simultaneously. And all fields of knowledge are alert to a main idea: how deep is technology shaping our societies and politics? Probably a double edge sword: on one hand it’s expanding our conscience as a planetary unity and diversity, even in our relation to the beginning of a new experience for the human civilization in its first solar system expansion, and on the other its closing minds and behaviors around technological individual devices that enclose the human experience and life. In a larger scale, with the development of energy wars in a close horizon, the theory of political systems will soon face the expected clash with the paradoxes of democracy, i.e., what values will emerge for the future of the fusion of democracy with technology after the fusion of democracy with liberal economics? Will Science become the new global religion? Can Dataism be that religion? Will these issues lead our society to a dystopia soon?

Regardless of the outcome, an age of instability is also an age of challenges where we must confront the illusions in the mist, and the shades of mirages, that with the promises of scientific salvation may makes us forget the realism and pragmatism of surviving, thriving and overcoming. In our era of uncertainty, and while our civilization moves forward towards a hyper-technological future, we should not forget to discuss and reflect on the values and ethics we would like to survive the ruin of time, and to pass on to the next generations.


TECHNOPOLITICS 2023 provides an open academic setting which will certainly open a rich horizon for reflections from diverse fields of study. In order to promote a transdisciplinary dialogue, with contributions from the entire spectrum of academic knowledge, the submission of proposals, on the following topics are particularly encouraged:

1. Technology, sustainability and ecology
2. Technology and wars
3. Technology, democracy and media
4. Technology, strategy and geopolitics
5. Technoscience, politics and progress
6. Human body and technology
7. Artificial intelligence, ethics and politics
8. Technology and Law
9. Space exploration: new horizons, settlements and architecture, commercialization, etc.
10. Genetics, drugs, human enhancement and meta human
11. Biotechnology and care as a political category
12. Authors: Philosophy, Political Theory, Science, etc.
13. Transhumanism vs Bioconservatism
14. AI Governance: Friendly AI
15. NBIC merging
16. Political economy and sociology
17. Literature, arts and myths
18. Philosophy of Science and Technology

Abstracts should be sent to Constantino Pereira Martins or nanosimbiotica@gmail.com with a small biographical note and may be submitted in English or Portuguese.

Presentations will be 20 minutes in English or Portuguese.

Conference proceedings will be published in e-book format in English and Portuguese.
Participation and attendance is free.

IMPORTANT DATES:
Submission: until 1st December 2022. Notification of the decision: 15h December 2022

Scientific Commitee:

Mário Santiago de Carvalho ( IEF – University of Coimbra)
Diogo Ferrer ( CECH – University of Coimbra)
Jorge Croce Rivera ( Évora University)

Organizors:

Constantino Pereira Martins
FCSH-NOVA University of Lisbon / IEF – University of Coimbra /  CECH - University of Coimbra

Filipe Luig
Gabinete de Investigação, Inovação e Desenvolvimento (GIID)
Instituto Português do Sangue e da Transplantação (IPST)

HOST: COIMBRA  UNIVERSITY. FLUC.

Organization Partners: IEF, Coimbra University. CECH, Coimbra Univerrsity. LET, Infinite Life Extension Technologies.