We went to Augsburg to discuss the Philosophy of Technology
Studying at CODE university is not only about learning the newest technology and building the best product. As part of our study program, we spend time on what we call “STS — Science, Technology and Society”. There we ask the big questions of life and reflect on the impact our work and our products have on society. Our teacher Sebastian starts with a short summary:
STS Seminar in Augsburg
From 15th to 18th November, I gathered a group of our amazing CODE students for a short field trip to the University of Augsburg. Together with the Augsburg philosophy department, we were discussing the philosophical and technological challenges for our society in a seminar with the title “What does it mean to live in a digital world?”. First and foremost, we learned that technology is not just a tool which people might use for the good or the bad — as many people think. Just on the contrary; technology changes who we are and how we live together. In our seminar, we focussed on various technologies — future technologies and technologies already in existence — and saw how they influence the way we think about the world and about ourselves.
But who am I to tell you what our students learned during that trip? Here is what our student Desi has to say about our course:
In November I had the opportunity to be a part of probably one of the most successful experiments this semester at CODE. It was a trip to the Bavarian city Augsburg, where we had two intensive all-day workshops on the Philosophy of Technology. The idea of this course was to mingle Philosophy students from the University of Augsburg and students from all three departments of CODE and discuss the challenges our society is facing currently through both the technological and philosophical lenses.
Development of Technology and the impact on society
When I first read about it, my interest was definitely piqued and I already had quite high expectations from this. The problem with high expectations usually is that reality rarely lives up to them. This, however, was not the case here.
The topics to be discussed ranged from Leonardo’s Technical Drawings, the Technology Question in Feminism, Transhumanism, the Matrix as Metaphysics and many many more — all of them perfectly suited for a discussion. We learned about the progress of Artificial Intelligence and Synthetic Biology — and discussed how this will influence our human constitution. We controversially discussed Hans Jonas’ thesis that technology should never put the possibility of genuine human life on this planet at risk (no matter what opportunities it might provide to take such a risk), why the technological cosmos is still not welcoming women in a way it should (by reading a great paper by Wendy Faulkner on the “Technology Question in Feminism”) and how our daily life is regulated by code as Lawrence Lessig claims in his book “Codev2”.
Great discussion with students from various study programs
All this makes you think and perhaps even question your own beliefs. From my experience, you really get to know people a lot better when you have discussed if they would rather take the red or the blue pill or when you know their stance on AI taking over the world.
Now back to the people, because you can’t really have a discussion by yourself. The students who welcomed us on the very first day we arrived were studying all very different subjects, not only Philosophy as we first expected but Law, Mathematics, Computer Science, Educational Science. This made for certainly very interesting views on the whole subject and made our discussions even richer. You know that the topic is interesting when it continues even outside the classroom. [And, if I may add that point from a lecturer’s perspective: You know that a student group is amazing if they won’t stop discussing the topics you raised in class, even if it is already long after midnight and you had just been crashing a dormitory party one of the great Augsburg students has invited us to.]
Another thing we found fascinating was to see the way a typical state university functions compared to CODE and while there were definitely differences, they were welcome ones and just contributed to the amazing atmosphere of the seminar. As a whole, it was a fantastic experience and hopefully, more exchanges like this one can happen in the future.
We hope you like that short inside into our STS program. Here you’ll find more information: https://code.berlin/en/study/science-technology-and-society/
