The 2nd annual ECT Lab+ Conference considered the human impact of technology and emphasized the importance of understanding how technology influences society positively and negatively. The challenge today is to propose ways of living together that account for the paradoxes and hierarchies of care; ways of invention and innovation that take into consideration the questions and needs of care - care for the self, care for the other than self, and care for the planet.
For example: the horizon of ‘becoming human’ is challenged by the development of contemporary technology such as planetary computational regimes, where the ability to attend is harvested as a commodity, where the ability to attend to the other is monetized with a ‘double click’ where knowledge itself is undermined by the speed and spread of information. The role of the University in this context is to develop modes and means of deep attention. Profound care is needed and this can only take place by reinventing and entangling knowledge systems through transdisciplinary practices.
The double etymology of securitas as care and security will be the focus of the conference this year, the security of food, and the security of ‘European values’ such as social democracy. With the current krisis of European democracy and the war in Ukraine, the global shift of a new geopolitical era has begun. The questions of security and care are now central to concerns about the impact of climate collapse. The context of growing insecurity, which is both geopolitical and physical, has led to the expansion of ecological questions of caring; caring for the planet, caring for the other, and caring for the self. The ECT Lab+ is proposing a threefold framework of three ecologies to explore the question of security from the individual ecology, collective ecology and planetary ecology.
The interventions (including artistic interventions) at the conference addressed areas that focus on the relation between technology, care, and the (Neg) Anthropocene. Among the many topics discussed:
Practices and technologies of well-being in architecture, social care, health care, child care, food production and education etc.
Climate breakdown, Collapsology, and Biodiversity.
Affect and Emotion in Artificial Intelligence, Ethical and Green AI.
Utopian and Critical Speculative Design & Aesthetics.
Speculative Fabulations and Future Technological Imaginaries
European Green Deal and technological development.
Ethics of responsible technological development.
Creative technology and critical maker culture.
Ethics of Care – securitas and new technologies.
Climate Justice as Social Justice, food production, and security.
Queer Ecology and the Post-natural.
