Communication technology could help humanity collectively mitigate the onrushing environmental catastrophes, but it is being used to distort information and increase division. We need to release its potential for beneficial societal change.
Responding to social change inevitably involves deferring to experts with specialist knowledge and experience. But who counts as expert, on what, and to what extent, are questions squarely in the province of humanities.
Our goal is to build a framework in which insights from humanities-based subjects and non-technical disciplines can have a real impact in the development of new technologies.
I am engaged in how humanities can produce expertise on experts to help qualify, uncover and check the power of ideas.
We live in a complex world. Disciplinary boundaries need to be broken and unusual alliances formed to shift attitudes for change.
Creating social knowledge often involves taking sides on philosophical questions concerning the nature of responsibility, freedom and morality. Experts should bear this in mind when advising decision makers.
Expertise is under increasing scrutiny. This scrutiny needs to be embraced and understood if we are to resolve this age of disinformation.
‘Giving Voice to Digital Democracies’ has an extremely timely, indeed necessary, role to play in bringing the traditional values and expertise of the humanities to bear to resolve the human dilemmas the modern information age has created.
There is an urgent need to develop more ethical and trustworthy AI technologies that can effect positive social change in modern digital democracies.
The political contestation of experts and their knowledge is one consequence of the profound turbulence affecting governance in the current era. The question now is whether the democratisation of expertise might also be harnessed by those seeking to re-invent public policy in the age of disruption.
