A two-day symposium hosted by Academic Writing Lab (AWL) and Department of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), IIIT-Delhi
The emergence of digital space as a new culture of knowledge generation and dissemination, prompts critical introspection on the new possibilities of knowledge production, dissemination and consumption. Does the virtual sphere entail an impoverished mode of mutual presence, compared to ‘real’ face-to-face presence/interaction? What therefore, is the nature of the relation between the 'virtual' and the 'real'? How is the 'virtual' embedded in the 'real' and vice-versa, and how is it discontinuous with the 'real'? Does the 'virtual' alter the very character of "knowledge", that is, its truth-conditions? Do virtual modes of interaction open up new possibilities of human sociality, inclusion, closeness and thus, collective and individual emancipation; or do they usher in new socio-political and economic forms of exclusion, exploitation and domination?
What implications do these new modes of interaction and knowledge production have for the notion of the 'public sphere'; for an emerging 'digital commons', and therefore, for what has been recognised as the 'democratic potential of the internet'? Further, how is the growing reliance on digital mediation weakening the spirit and substance of democracy in Indian society? How does the pervasive presence of the virtual in our lives impinge on our digital 'privacy' and security? To what extent does 'blockchain' technology and distributed data-bases allay these 'privacy' concerns? And what effects would the emergence of, and speculative trading in, decentralized cryptocurrencies, enabled by 'blockchain' (distributed ledger) technology, have on the existing monetary system backed by the state, and thus, on the traditional ('real') economy—still grounded in production and labour? How will this relationship evolve in the fu-ture?
This symposium aims to address these concerns, which stem from the larger societal, political, and technological context in which the digital is embedded. How is knowledge and truth being transformed in relation to the possibilities that digital mediation opens up, as well as perhaps, those that it forecloses.
Keynote Address: "The Democratization of Public Life and the Declining Value of Evidence: The Case of History"
28th August at 19:15 IST
by
Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty,
Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History at the University of Chicago.
Symposium Convenors: Dr. Payel C Mukherjee, Dr. Aasim Khan, Dr. Nishad Patnaik, Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, IIIT-Delhi
For any queries, please write to awl@iiitd.ac.in