16.6. We are Nature, Not Machines - Lecture by Alison Powell

You’re warmly invited to a lecture by Associate Professor Alison Powell titled “We are Nature, Not Machines: Narrative strategies for better lives in uncertain times“. Join us on June 16th at 14:00 at Soc & Kom, room 209 (Snellmaniankatu 12, 2nd floor).

We are Nature, Not Machines: Narrative strategies for better lives in uncertain times

Go faster! Do more! These are some of the promises associated with technology and innovation. They are especially compelling at an historical moment full of circulating narratives of crisis - from climate breakdown to social alienation. Systems are broken, so the story goes, and an innovative response is to make things more efficient - to put in less effort and gain more rewards. In this narrative of the future, innovation comprises what can be scaled or speeded up, suggesting that human innovation resembles machine innovation. 

This lecture presents how aspects of ‘being nature’ might create a broader conception of innovation, unfolding questions of being in relation, holding complexity and tolerating paradox. Examining everyday life situations from recovering from illness to attending community meetings, the aim is to narrate the production of new futures and to claim these as forms of social innovation.

Alison Powell is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE and serves as Programme Director for the MSc Media and Communications (Data and Society). Alison’s research addresses the discourse, design and context for technologies in the public interest.

Past projects have examined values and ethics in technology start-ups, the moral economy of software production, and the roles of citizens in smart cities. Current research focuses on democratic decision-making in data-driven public sector contexts, including in urban planning and health and care.

Alison published Undoing Optimization: Civic Action in Smart Cities with Yale University Press in 2021. Alison’s participatory research practice of data walking is widely used in public consultation, teaching, and community research worldwide.