CDE at Tech & Society Week 2023

March 27 – April 1, 2023 marked the second annual Tech & Society Week—a week of events taking place throughout Georgetown, exploring various issues “at the nexus of technology and society.”

Reporting in the the Voice, Annette Hasnas explained that the week “was designed with a wide range of audiences in mind, from those deeply embroiled in the week’s topics to those simply curious about how the issues impact our lives.” As a new center on campus, CDE was introduced through some of its faculty’s participation in several key events:

• CDE’s Meg Leta Jones joined Amanda Levendowski, associate professor of law and the founding director of the Intellectual Property and Information Policy (iPIP) Clinic at Georgetown Law, for an introduction to the new field of Feminist Cyberlaw. This event was co-sponsored by the Technology & Law Forum of the Women’s Bar Association of DC and the Cyberlaw Society of Georgetown University Law Center. The virtual event featured discussion based on the presenters’ forthcoming edited volume, which explores how gender, race, sexuality, disability, and class shape cyberspace and the laws that govern it.
• CDE’s Laura DeNardis spoke on the topic of Interplanetary Internet Governance at Georgetown Law School.
• CDE’s Cal Newport, along with Jeanine Turner, professor in the Communication, Culture, and Technology Program, and Erika Cohen-Derr, DLS, DLS associate vice president for Student Affairs, had a conversation on “Tech and the Good Life,” addressing the questions “Wasn’t tech supposed to help us live better? Can we still make it do that?” The conversation focused on how to pursue a meaningful life in a world full of distractions and invited audience members to reflect on their own sociotechnical dilemmas and to explore the collective nature of the current cognitive crisis.
• A two-day workshop by the CDE’s Will Fleisher and  Brian Berkey from the University of Pennsylvania. It was co-sponsored by the CDE and the Wharton School of Business and featured talks on new research in digital ethics by rising early-career researchers with backgrounds in philosophy, business ethics, and computer science. The workshop included in-depth discussion about each of the eight talks. View the program

Voice reporter Hasnas observed that the Tech & Society Week events “struck a delicate balance between technology and social science, exploring not only humanity’s technological achievements, but how we utilize them, and how we ought to.”