Theoretical and evolutionary biologist Carl Bergstrom will explore the crisis of human collective decision-making in a social media world during this free public lecture at QUT.
Presented by the Australian Centre for Health Services Innovation (AusHSI), the lecture will be hosted by QUT Vice-Chancellor Professor Margaret Sheil at QUT Gardens Theatre on November 21 from 5pm.
Carl Bergstrom is a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, a critic of low-quality or misleading scientific research, and co-author of a book on misinformation called Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World. His work concerns the flow of information through biological and social networks. He is the
In his QUT talk, Professor Bergstrom will look at what social media and information technology more generally are doing to society. Over the past 20 years, society has fashioned the web into an information pipeline to satisfy and profit from people's evolved desires for novel information and social connection. What happens when the scale of human communication is radically transformed in the span of the generation, and our mechanisms for creating collective understanding no longer promote the spread of accurate information, strengthen democracy, and advance human well-being?
Professor Bergstrom considers how we ended up here, and explores some possible suggestions for what we can do about it.
The event will include drinks and nibbles from 5pm and the public lecture at 6pm.
The public lecture is part of AIMOS 2023: The fifth annual conference of the Association for Interdisciplinary Metaresearch & Open Science. (People already attending AIMOS do not need to register for this lecture on Eventbrite.)
