Dates: 8-12 September
Virtual and Physical locations
Digitization doesn’t change our world but it does, however, radically change HOW and WHAT we can or must deal with in this world.
Having arrived in the third decade of the 21st century, that is, at a time when we’ve been promised self-driving cars, flying taxis, global prosperity and much more, when we’ve either wished for them or been afraid of all that, at a time when the discourse about digital transformation is louder but also more confused than ever before, it’s time to rethink the foundations of the digital world – or what we believe the digital world to be.
What began as a “tool technology” has become a central and transformative “cultural technology;” what was developed as a work environment has become a social habitat that is home to well over 4 billion people; and what began as a fun, harmless exchange of daily banalities and cat photos is now a political battleground …
But how we deal with it, how we prepare for its further impact, how we think about the social, economic, and political framework for it has not changed, and the changes we do see are still too hesitant and too slow. Whether we like it or not, digital transformation is not just an appealing rhetorical phrase; it is a matter of defining reality. That the aforementioned deficits are evident and are causing us substantial discomfort is one of the defining experiences of the current pandemic lockdowns.
Forty-two years after its founding, in the second year of the Covid pandemic, as the digitization of our world has intensified along with the hopes and fears we attach to it, Ars Electronica is also looking to its own roots.
And so, once again, Ars Electronica in Kepler’s Gardens will be a globally networked festival supported jointly by well over a hundred partners.
Find more information here and view the festival Catalogue here.
Click here for a detailed online events schedule.
