MAK

What Do We Want?

21 Jun - 01 Oct 2017

© MAK
WHAT DO WE WANT?
DIMENSIONS OF A NEW DIGITAL HUMANISM
21 June – 1 October 2017

The Vienna Biennale Circle, a flexible platform of Vienna-based personalities from different fields, is working on developing the cornerstones of a new humanism in Digital Modernity, to be presented in the form of an exhibition manifesto. The manifesto will contain an update of humanist ideals in times of all-encompassing digitalization, especially in the area of data security, while at the same time thematizing the boundary between human being and digital machine: How much bodily and intellectual enhancement can a human being tolerate?

The exhibition manifesto will also speculate as to how robots outfitted with super-intelligence can be induced to behave humanistically towards humans, since the relationship between man and digital machine is emerging as a key question of Digital Modernity: Robots and their concomitant artificial intelligence (AI) systems will soon overtake humans in terms of their numbers and the transition from specialized AI to a super-intelligence surpassing any kind of human intelligence is approaching. Thus, the new digital humanism encompasses not only relationships between people, but also the constructive coexistence of people and digital machines, inclusive of future super-intelligence. This endows the quest for a new 21st century humanism with a whole other dimension.