How might a pandemic year of digitally mediated life change society for good? Techno-futurists long predicted that computers would liberate workers from office drudgery, transform schooling, and make it possible to work and learn anywhere. While the desktop computer and the internet profoundly changed modern life, those work-from-home and online-education revolutions never really happened—until 2020 and COVID-19. Margaret O’Mara explores how this extraordinary year has revealed both the great possibilities and immense limitations of the technology we now use to work and communicate, and exposed the stark inequities of the digital age. These wrenching disruptions create an opportunity—and an imperative—to reimagine our silicon society, creating high-tech places that work for all and balance technological possibility with human connection. Margaret O’Mara is the Howard & Frances Keller Endowed Professor of History at the University of Washington and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. She is the author of several books about modern American politics and society, most recently The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America (Penguin Press, 2019). A Distinguished Lecturer of the Organization of American Historians as well as a past fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the American Council of Learned Societies, O’Mara was a member of the Simpson Center Society of Scholars in 2011-12. The Katz Distinguished Lectures in the Humanities Series recognizes scholars in the humanities and emphasizes the role of the humanities in liberal education. All Katz Lectures are free and open to the public. For more information see simpsoncenter.org…. Registration and more information: simpsoncenter.org… |