Servant Spaces, Infrastructures and People, October 3, 2-4pm

Part of Festival of the New

Across the first century of its existence, The New School challenged the status quo and assumptions about how things work in politics, society and our communities. In Servant Spaces, Infrastructures and People, Parsons School of Constructed Environments celebrates The New School’s commitment to social justice with a cluster of demitasse talks and a panel conversation that reconsider infrastructures that hide in plain sight, right under our noses – from drinking straws, chopsticks and microfarms, to life-preserving ductwork, notions of shelter and service ecologies.

Thursday October 3, 2019 2:00pm – 4:00pm
Starr Foundation Hall – UL102 University Center – 63 Fifth Avenue

Lang “Praxis Tank,” October 3 @ 6pm

Please join us as we launch Praxis Tank: dedicated to elevating knowledge borne from freedom struggles; and the practices-pedagogies-experiments that advance collective transformation and movements for liberation. We take “knowledge” to embody many forms at once — art, stories, actions, music, writing. ‘Tank’ refers to a space for holding and storing unseen and undervalued knowledge, for collaborative thinking across time and space, and for creative experimentation.

Thursday, October 3, 2019
Lang Cafe, 64 W 11th St.
Program: 6-8pm
Reception: 8-8:30pm

Nicole Burrowes on Freedom Schools
Lynn Lewis of Picture the Homeless Oral History Project
Mildred Beltré and Oasa DuVerney of Brooklyn Hi! Art Machine
Betty Yu of Chinatown Art Brigade
Shana Agid and Gabrielle Bediner-Viani of Working with People
Shani Peters of The Black School

Organized / moderated by Ujju Aggarwal and Laura Y. Liu

Tools & Weapons: A conversation with Brad Smith and Trevor Noah

September 9, 8:30 to 9:30pm
Tishman Auditorium, University Center
website

Join Microsoft’s president, one of the tech industry’s broadest thinkers, for a frank and thoughtful discussion about how to harness the power of today’s technology while tackling the threats of an increasingly digitized world.

Microsoft President Brad Smith operates by a simple core belief: When your technology changes the world, you bear a responsibility to help address the world you have helped create. This might seem uncontroversial, but it flies in the face of a tech sector long obsessed with rapid growth and sometimes on disruption as an end in itself. While sweeping digital transformation holds great promise, we have reached an inflection point. The world has turned information technology into both a powerful tool and a formidable weapon, and new approaches are needed to manage an era defined by even more powerful inventions like artificial intelligence. Companies that create technology must accept greater responsibility for the future, and governments will need to regulate technology by moving faster and catching up with the pace of innovation.

In Tools and Weapons, Brad Smith and his coauthor Carol Ann Browne bring us a captivating narrative from the cockpit of one of the world’s largest and most powerful tech companies as it finds itself in the middle of some of the thorniest emerging issues of our time. These are challenges that come with no preexisting playbook, including privacy, cybercrime and cyberwar, social media, the moral conundrums of artificial intelligence, big tech’s relationship to inequality, and the challenges for democracy, far and near. While in no way a self-glorifying “Microsoft memoir,” the book pulls back the curtain remarkably wide onto some of the company’s most crucial recent decision points as it strives to protect the hopes technology offers against the very real threats it also presents. There are huge ramifications for communities and countries, and Brad Smith provides a thoughtful and urgent contribution to that effort.

Join Brad Smith as he sits down in conversation with Trevor Noah, bestselling author, world-famous standup comedian, and host of the Daily Show, to discuss Tools and Weapons and how the world should navigate the vast potential and existential risks of our digital world.

A limited number of free tickets for this event is available to New School students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Click here to reserve a ticket. Please present your NewCard at the event to verify your registration.

This event is co-sponsored by Strand Books and the School of Media Studies at The New School. Opening remarks by Peter Asaro, Director of The New School’s Graduate Program in Media Studies.