Past CSPO Events
- April 26, 2019CSPO DC - New Tools for Science Policy
Gaming the Future
Re-activating creativity and play in professional spaces
Remarkable failures of foresight make headlines all the time. Despite access to powerful foresight tools, governments, companies, and individuals lack the capacity or the will to put insights about the future into practice.
In this New Tools breakfast seminar, Lauren Keeler argues that traditional foresight tools often do not effectively empower people to take action and they ask too little of people’s enormous capacity for creativity. Play, on the other hand, can motivate action, build connections, and spark innovation. Keeler introduces several games she has designed that guide individuals and organizations to envision new futures, reckon with potential shocks on the horizon, and engage in civil dialogue about important issues. Join us on April 26th to learn about these games and play them yourself!
Lauren Withycombe Keeler
- March 18, 2019CSPO DC - New Tools for Science Policy
Project Confluence
Engineering and Science for Environmental, Climate, and Energy Justice
Many organizations around the United States are dedicated to fighting for justice on environmental, energy, and climate issues. A new movement called Project Confluence seeks to help engineers and scientists meet the needs of community justice groups. Project Confluence is the first big project of re-Engineered, an interdisciplinary laboratory focused on embedding social justice, peace, and environmental protection at the heart of technical research and design.
In the next New Tools for Science Policy breakfast seminar, Darshan Karwat will discuss the approach re-Engineered is taking to identify the needs of these community groups, and how re-Engineered is starting to build a collective of engineers and scientists passionate about addressing these needs.
Darshan Karwat
- February 18, 2019CSPO DC - New Tools for Science Policy
Rethinking Death in the Digital Era
What happens to your digital self after you die?
Like most people, you probably haven’t given this question much thought. But consider how much of your life involves digital assets: social media profiles, email archives, digital music and video purchases, image galleries, web browsing histories, and much more. How to deal with these digital assets after we die has become a critical consideration as more and more of our lives take place online.
Global companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon all have their own protocols for managing the digital assets of their deceased users. But until now, there has been no significant participation in such processes from any user groups or policymakers (either within or outside the United States). In this New Tools for Science Policy seminar, Faheem Hussain highlights the need to rethink postmortem design for digital products and platforms.
Faheem Hussain
- February 07, 2019CSPO DC
Higher Education Re-Imagined
Launch event for the Winter 2019 Issues in Science and Technology
Launch event for the Winter 2019 Issues in Science and Technology.
Systemic weaknesses within the US system of higher education and workforce training in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have been well documented for decades. From overspecialization and elitism to sexual harassment and skewed incentives, these problems continue to sap the vitality and social value of the STEM enterprise—threatening the United States’ global leadership in STEM education.
How can these challenges be addressed? In a series of clear-eyed essays in the Winter 2019 Issues in Science and Technology, Lida Beninson, Frazier Benya, Tom Rudin, and Layne Scherer present compelling pathways toward sustainable, systemic, inclusive, institutional change.
Lida Beninson, Frazier Benya, Tom Rudin, Layne Scherer
- December 10, 2018
- November 16, 2018CSPO DC
Progress Against Alzheimer’s Disease
Launch event for the Fall 2018 Issues in Science and Technology
What are the implications of this history for ongoing efforts to deal with Alzheimer’s disease? What does it say about investments in the study of health services, and innovations in health care delivery? As Congress provides new money to fund research, what lessons can help guide the next generation of public investments?
To celebrate the publication of the Fall 2018 Issues in Science and Technology, ASU professor Robert Cook-Deegan, author of “Progress Against Alzheimer’s Disease?” and an OTA alum,will talk with Zaven Khachaturian, editor-in-chief of Alzheimer’s & Dementia and former director of the Office of Alzheimer Research at the National Institutes of Health. Join us for a fascinating look at the current state of and future opportunities for Alzheimer’s treatment and care.
Robert M Cook-Deegan, Zaven Khachaturian
- November 15, 2018CSPO DC - New Tools for Science Policy
Rethinking Law and Order: Navigating Citizen Rights in an Age of Uberveillance
Increasingly, the personal and work-related smart devices we use are packed with sensors that record the who (identity), where (location), when (time), and how (mode of transport/condition) of all our interactions. Knowing with some level of predictability where a person is and with whom he or she is interacting—a situation called “uberveillance”—has obvious commercial and security value. User convenience and law enforcement application have been major drivers for collecting huge quantities of data on consumers and citizens. But uberveillance has important and sometimes troubling implications for citizen rights and the rule of law.
In this New Tools talk, Katina Michael will address issues related to law, regulation, and policy as they pertain to real-time monitoring and tracking of things and people.
Katina Michael
- November 15, 2018CSPO DC
Data Alive Workshop
The Eleventh Workshop on the Social Implications of National Security (SINS18)
This workshop seeks to provide a platform for multidisciplinary perspectives on “data”. Digital data has traditionally been defined as “bits and bytes”; it was not information, and it was not knowledge or wisdom. There is no doubt that data drives decision making in corporations; a process of transformation into something other than bits and bytes sheds light on short term and long-term structural objectives. Today there are machine-to-machine communications, without a human in the loop. What are some of the social implications of such systems? What is the role of the human in an increasingly technocratic society? How can we leverage data for human and environmental sustainability? How is narrative important to our future(s)? The Workshop will invite stakeholders of all types to participate in activities, allowing them to return to their workplaces to ask the same questions and the same challenges elicited in the Workshop.
Katina Michael, Robert M Cook-Deegan, Daniel Sarewitz, Lee Gutkind, Mahmud Farooque