Wendy Chun: Technofaschismus (Keynote)

In the organizer's words:

Miriam Makeba Auditorium
In English with simultaneous translation into German

Free admission

What role does technology play in the resurgence of global fascisms? On many levels, the entanglement of technology and technology companies - and those who have benefited from or inspired them - in these political developments seems to play a central role: from social media algorithms developed with the intention of creating agitated clusters of blissful rage, to dreams of replacing almost all workers with AI; from dark enlightenment 'gurus' discussing how best to get rid of the unwanted 99%, to open calls for the destruction of democratic systems. Unlike in the past, however, this time the focus does not seem to be on building mass movements, but rather on evasion. The aim is to break away and escape from a dying planet in the name of freedom. The talk will explain the multiple connections between technology and global fascism and in particular analyze how current machine learning algorithms 'train' their users and shape the world. The question is: To what extent are existing technological systems and logics driving global fascism?