The increasing ubiquity of digital information technologies and systems – from smartphones and self driving cars to artificial intelligence and advanced robotics – is having unprecedented impacts on society and how we think about issues like privacy, security, responsibility, and trust in the future. The unfamiliar landscape inaugurated by new digital information systems also demands new ways of thinking and problem-solving within engineering disciplines. This course will introduce students to the intimate connection between ideas and practice - philosophical concepts and technological systems - in both historical and contemporary contexts. The questions the course poses are twofold: first, how have different genealogies of ideas about the human and the machine (such as cybernetics and complexity theory) fed into the evolution of today’s digital information systems?; and second, what is the broader significance of such systems and
associated technologies in challenging conventional understandings of key concepts – including intelligence, autonomy, and responsibility – in ways that advance discussions about the political, ethical, and security issues associated with intelligent technologies?
Drawing on the latest research across the social sciences, the course will unpack these questions through a range of exciting topics, including the rise of online social networks and the associated challenges to traditional notions of privacy and identity; new understandings of security and trust in blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies; and new conceptions of intelligence from ‘Deep Blue’ and ‘Alpha Go’ to the ’Blue Brain’ project.
