The panelists will discuss the influence of new technologies on democratic institutions and societies worldwide as well as in Poland. Have Facebook and Twitter opened up new possibilities of civic self-organization? Or have they merely created the illusion of being empowered? What impact do mass identity theft and data leaks have on democratic governments? How big is the risk posed by cyberattacks?
Members of the panel are:
Evgeny Morozov, leading international expert in the fields of Internet and democracy, author of „The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom” and “To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism”
Ivan Krastev, political scientist; Permanent Fellow at the IWM; author of „In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don’t Trust Our Leaders?” and “Democracy Disrupted: The Politics of Global Protest”
Katarzyna Szymielewicz, President of the Panoptykon Foundation; Vice-President of European Digital Rights dealing with human rights protection in the context of new technology development
Aleksander Tarkowski, Director of the Digital Center Project: Poland, coordinator of Creative Commons Poland.
The discussion will be opened by Anna Giza, Vice-Rector of the University of Warsaw, and Karolina Wigura, political section chief at Kultura Liberalna. The debate will be jointly moderated by Marcin Król, Professor of History of Ideas and Dean of the Faculty of Applied Sciences at the University of Warsaw, and Shalini Randeria, Rector of the IWM and Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Graduate Institute, Geneva.
The 22nd Tischner Debate is jointly organized by the Institute of Human Science (IWM) and University of Warsaw, and the Kultura Liberalna, generously supported by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. The event is held under the honorable patronage of the Warsaw Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz and with the media support of the Gazeta Wyborcza and TVN24 Biznes i Świat. Entrance is free.
About Tischner Debates
The event is part of the Józef Tischner Debates, a series of public debates in Warsaw, jointly launched by the IWM and Warsaw University in 2005 in memory of the Polish priest and philosopher Józef Tischner, founding president of the IWM. The first 20 debates took place between 2005 and 2010 and included discussions by outstanding intellectuals and important public figures such as Giuliano Amato, Ralf Dahrendorf, Joschka Fischer, Bronisław Geremek, Simon Peres, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, and Adam Zagajewski on topics of societal relevance, such as the future of Europe, climate change, and the public role of religion. The debates used to be chaired by Professor Marcin Król and Krzysztof Michalski, Founding Rector of the IWM. The latter’s death led to a short hiatus in the series. It restarted in October 2014 with the 21st Tischner Debate on “Illiberal democracy”.