Art-Based Future: Why societies need the arts for surviving in the digital age.

Guestlecture of president Gerald Bast at Nanyang Technological University Singapore

09. April 2018
This lecture covers current and contemporary issues concerning the technological revolution which is speeding up: Artificial Intelligence, robotics and genetic engineering are about to dramatically change private life and entire societies.
Many experts predict that, due to automation and digitization, up to 50 percent of the now existing jobs are in danger to be discontinued in the next 20 years.
For the first time in the history of civilization, machines are replacing not just human muscle power but complex human thinking. Manmade self-learning machines seem to get in direct competition with humans in fields, which were believed to belong exclusively to the sphere of humans.
Will we have to re-define the term ‘human work’?
What does this mean for education when its primary goal – employability - takes on a different meaning?
How will we have to re-think the role of mankind in a world, which is increasingly controlled, created and dominated by evolutionary algorithms and synthetic biology?
Can a new understanding of the arts become a necessary catalyst in times of fundamental societal and economic changes?

Location:
Nanyang Technological University
50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798