All Change: the Digital Revolution and the Fate of Humanity

Professor Anthony Giddens
Thursday 22nd October, 4pm - 6pm, V/045
Production team: Rhys Cory Lowsley, Kyle Knights, Tess Parker and Cat Santini

Interview with Professor Tony Giddens

Watch a recording of the talk

Seminar synopsis

From personal life to the global economy and the frontiers of science – nothing has been left untouched by the digital revolution, a set of transformations almost certainly only as yet in their early stages. Arguably these already amount to the greatest period of innovation ever in human history in terms of its intensity, speed and global scope. In the social sciences, they have thus far mostly been interpreted in terms of the rise of the internet and the social media. The digital revolution should been seen, however, as the increasingly complex integration of the internet, supercomputer‌s and robotics, in which supercomputers have the prime role. It is a fundamental mistake to allocate such changes to a separate space of ‘tech’, since the implications for our lives are so profound. The very future of humanity is at stake.

Professor Anthony Giddens

Anthony Giddens is a Fellow of King’s College Cambridge and Emeritus Professor at the London School of Economics. He was Director of the LSE from 1997 to 2003, and was made a member of the House of Lords in 2004. Lord Giddens has honorary degrees or comparable awards from 21 universities. In 1984 he co-founded the publishing house Polity Press, which today produces 150 titles a year. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Russian Academy of Science and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He was the BBC Reith Lecturer in 1999, and was awarded the ‘Spanish Nobel Prize’, the Prince of Asturias Award, in 2002. His textbook Sociology has sold over a million copies. According to Google Scholar, Anthony Giddens is the most widely cited sociologist in the world. His many books include The Constitution of Society, Modernity and Self-Identity, Beyond Left and Right, The Third Way,Europe in the Global Age, and The Politics of Climate Change. His most recent major work is Turbulent and Mighty Continent: What Future for Europe? for which he won the European Book of the Year Prize 2014. His books have been translated into more than forty languages.

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