Future of Consciousness

Join us for the first of a four-part series, “The Future of X,” a series of conversations sponsored by The School for the Future of Innovation in Society (SFIS), The Center for Energy in Society and the Barrett Honors College about the futures we want to create.

Free; RSVP online: http://bit.ly/FutureOfTalks
Refreshments provided

“The Future of Consicousness” features Gregg Pascal Zachary of SFIS and Gaymon Bennett, Assistant Professor of Religion, Science and Technology.

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More about The Future of Consciousness:
One of the enduring traits of humans is their ability to think, plan, reflect and revise. Ever since Descartes proposed his famous dictum, “I think therefore, I am,” disciplined, creative thought has been considered the hallmark of the human experience. Today, science and technology are transforming the texture of lived experiences, including consciousness. Digital technologies, from computers to social media, vastly expand human memories and accelerate the process of cognition. Bio-medical technologies, meanwhile, promise improvements how humans think, reason, feel and motivate themselves. Talk of a “smart pill” no longer seems fantastic. Artificial intelligence and computer-guided robots are poised to compete with human intelligence, at least in some activities. To make sense of this dizzying march into what some call superconsciousness, meet and discuss on Feb. 15 with two ASU professors working at the collision point of consciousness, innovation, ethics and the future.

Speakers:
Gaymon Bennett is Assistant Professor of Religion, Science, and Technology at Arizona State University. He was previously a Senior Fellow in the Center for Biological Futures at Fred Hutchinson in Seattle and the Lead of Human Practices in the BIOFAB at UC Berkeley/Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. He is the author of Technicians of Human Dignity: Bodies, Souls, and the Making of Intrinsic Worth, and co-author of Designing Human Practices: An Experiment with Synthetic Biology and Sacred Cells? Why Christians Should Support Stem Cell Research.

Gregg Pascal Zachary, professor of practice in The School for the Future of Innovation in Society, is the author of Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century. In the Barrett Honors College, he teaches a course on “the quest for enhanced consciousness, from the Greeks to Google.”