Digital society
Social order in the digital society

Discussion | 02.04.2021, 7 pm.
Live at Goethe-Institut, Hanoi and at Deutsches Haus, Ho Chi Minh City
Registration at 6:30 p.m. | Start at 7 p.m.

Online via Zoom
Start at 6:45 p.m.

Zoom-Link to the discussion

‘Social order in the digital society’(PDF, 407 KB)

Modern institutions, both public and private, rely on tools and procedures that track individuals, assess their behavior, and assign them membership in various categories. They use them, variously, in their efforts to monitor conduct, calculate risk, or extract value. These classifications distribute value, rank people and things, and shape their future lives.

How is social order constituted and legitimated in a society ruled by digital classifiers and associated actuarial techniques? What do these developments mean for fundamental principles such as equality and fairness? What are the moral implications of looking at individuals through the lens of these new classificatory architectures? And how do we justify the use of techniques that are growing ever more efficient at predicting outcomes but are ever less amenable to human sense making?