About the event
“In order to do anything that matters, we must first be able to give attention to the things that matter.” This is how writer and technology ethicist James Williams ends is highly influential book “Stand out of Our Light. Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy.” The ability to pay good attention, to attend in the right way, to the right things and to the right people is essential to our lives - both as individuals and as a society. Is that ability threatened by new technologies? The business model of some of the most valued and most powerful companies today consists of buying and selling control over human attention. Are these attention markets morally wrong? New information technologies enable new kinds of political influence and communication. What threats are posed by those who use attention for influence and dubious political ends? Issues about attention and technology bring into sharp focus the role of attention for gathering and sharing knowledge, valuable social relations, well-being and mental health, political freedom and democracy. In a conversation with James Williams, we bring together a variety of different perspectives on threats to good attention posed by technology – from screen-based devices generally to social media, search engines, recommender algorithms, chatbots, or large language models.
The meeting will involve five short presentations and then an extended period for discussion among the presenters and with the audience. It is a part of William's visit to the GoodAttention and SalientSolutions projects.
The presenters
James Williams is a writer and technology ethicist. He is particularly focused on advancing freedom of thought, attention, and wellbeing in environments of highly persuasive design. His book “Stand out of Our Light.” has received wide critical acclaim.
Gunn Enli is a professor in political communication. She works on media regulation and policy, political election campains and social media, and the concept of authenticity in regard to new media, their effects on well-being and their regulation.
Tobias Dahl is an entrepreneur and technology researcher. He leads the Techwell Center for human digitalization and works for SINTEF Digital.
Ailo Krogh Ravna works of the Norwegian Consumer Council. The Norwegian Consumer Council has been active to push for more regulation in surveillance based advertisement. Part of his work consisted in documenting the use of dark patterns by big technology companies.
Sebastian Watzl is a philosopher. He leads the ERC-funded GoodAttention project. His research investigates what attention is, what makes attention good or bad, challenges to good attention, and the ethical, epistemic and political role of attention.
More about about James Williams
James Williams is a writer and technology ethicist. He is particularly focused on advancing freedom of thought, attention, and wellbeing in environments of highly persuasive design.
His first book, Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy, was published in June by Cambridge University Press as an outcome of the inaugural Nine Dots Prize, which he won in 2017. The Observer hailed it as ‘a landmark book,’ Financial Times described it as ‘an absorbing and deeply disturbing book, and TechCrunch called it ‘an instant classic in the field of tech ethics.’
Additionally, the President of Princeton University recently selected Stand Out of Our Light as the 2019 ‘pre-read,’ which all incoming Princeton students were assigned to read before commencing their studies.
James received his PhD from Oxford, where he studied at Balliol College and the Oxford Internet Institute, under Professor Luciano Floridi. James has been a research associate at the OII’s Digital Ethics Lab; a visiting researcher at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics; a tutor in the Oxford Computer Science department; and a visiting fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, & Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Previously, James worked at Google for over ten years, where he received the Founder’s Award, the company’s highest honor, for his work on search advertising. He is also a co-founder of the Time Well Spent campaign; a consultant across industry, academic, non-profit, and governmental sectors; a frequent commentator on technology issues in the media; and has written on technology topics for The Observer, WIRED, and other publications. Prior to his professional and academic work, James earned a master’s in product design engineering and an undergraduate degree in literature.
For more Information
Please be in touch with Sebastian Watzl if you are interested in more details