Being Human in a Global Village (1 March, CFP Deadline)

Anna University, Chennai, India
22-25 July 2021

https://21stcenturywiener.org/

The 1 March 2021 deadline for submission of papers and abstracts to the third installment of SSIT’s conference series on the legacy of cybernetician “Norbert Wiener in the 21st Century” (21CW2020) is fast approaching!

This year’s conference theme, “ Being Human in a Global Village” invites participants to consider how we – as policy makers, parents, citizens, business owners, researchers, humans – need to be proactively preparing for a new world in light of the challenges coming our way in the form of artificial intelligence, or machine learning. In-person events will take place at Anna University (Chennai, India), and opportunities for virtual participation are available.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers for the conference include:

• Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala (Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras)
• Dr. Katina Michael (Director, Centre for Engineering, Policy and Society, Arizona State University, USA & Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society)
• Dr. Sergio Bittanti (Professor, Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
• Witold Pedrycz (Canada Research Chair, University of Alberta, Canada, and IEEE Fellow)

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Being Human in a Global Village

http://21stcenturywiener.org/

IEEE Conference Number 48944

The phrase “Global Village” was coined by Canadian media theorist and philosopher Marshall McLuhan to describe how the propagation of media technologies creates an ever-more interconnected world. McLuhan was deeply influenced by the work of Norbert Wiener, a mathematician, technologist, and philosopher whose work in cybernetics brought ideas like “complexity, computing, communications, and control” to the quest for a General Systems Theory. Wiener’s work offered a comprehensive blend of theory and practice spanning across the “Global Village,” and this conference pays tribute to both the global dimension of his legacy and his ethical commitment to valorizing human freedom and autonomy within a society increasingly dominated by cybernetic systems.

21CW2020: “Being Human in a Global Village” is the third in a series of conferences initiated by the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT), following events in Boston (2014) and Melbourne (2016). The 2020 event invites us to consider how we – as policy makers, parents, citizens, business owners, researchers, humans – need to be proactively preparing for a new world in light of the challenges coming our way in the form of artificial intelligence, or machine learning. For instance, young people need to be flexible and adaptable as the workplace in 20 years’ time will be very different from today.

This conference will have three general themes:

• The state of technologies initiated by Wiener.
• The social impact of those technologies.
• Wiener’s 1950s engagement and travels in India.

More specifically, we invite participants to consider how Wiener’s work resonates with various contemporary interpretations of the concept “global village.” For example, literary scholar Sue-Im’s claims that it has come to designate “the dominant term for expressing a global coexistence altered by transnational commerce, migration, and culture,” while Thomas Friedman defines of the global village as a world “tied together into a single globalized marketplace and village.”

Contemporary cybernetics began as an interdisciplinary study connecting the fields of control systems, electrical network theory, mechanical engineering, logic modeling, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, anthropology, and psychology in the 1940s, through the Macy Conferences. Studies in cybernetics provide a means for examining the design and function of any system, including social systems such as business management and organizational learning, achieving both effective and human functioning.

For more information and deadlines visit:

http://21stcenturywiener.org/

Prof. T V Gopal
Conference Chair & Professor Department of Computer Science and Engineering College of Engineering Anna University Chennai – 600 025, INDIA
Mob: +91 9840121302
gopal@annauniv.edu
gopal.tadepalli@gmail.com

Prof. Greg Adamson
Programme Chair &
Associate Professor and Enterprise Fellow in Cyber Security
School of Computing and Information Systems
University of Melbourne
Parkville, VIC, Australia
Mob: +61 423783527
greg.adamson@unimelb.edu.au greg.adamson.engineer@gmail.com