Aspen Institute España and Fundación Telefónica held the fifth conference of the Tech & Society Program on November 20.
The last conference that year had the participation of Belén Barreiro, founder and director of MyWord, who discussed the impact of the technological revolution on the configuration of a new Spanish social map in a talk with José María Lassalle, Secretary of State for the Information Society and the Digital Agenda.
The event was followed in streaming, interpreted to LSE and commented on networks with #TechSociety.
The citizens of the present are divided into four large groups with differentiated consumption, purchasing and voting patterns: wealthy digital, impoverished digital, affluent analog and impoverished analog. The former are inclined to Ciudadanos, the latter to Podemos, the third to the PP and the fourth to the PSOE.
We spend less, and we do it better. We doubt more, we learn more. Alerted by the great storm and with the weapons of the Internet in hand, digital Spaniards have become much more demanding consumers and voters. And everyone, including those who don’t know how to navigate, have become more supportive. The wave of hardship impoverished pockets and enriched consciences.
The crisis is over, but almost nothing is or will be the same. The future has already arrived. Are our children really going to live worse? Do new ways of working, communicating and learning really lead to a less pleasant society?
The new Tech & Society Program aims to establish a forum for reflection on the major issues raised by advances in digital technology and its influence in areas as diverse as human relations, politics, education, the economy or the medicine. Digital technology is radically changing almost everything we do, from the way we run our businesses to how we educate the next generation, from the way we remember how to live together in a democratic society. What are the biggest technology trends and changes, and how can we prepare for them? What are the specific ways that technological change is improving our individual and collective lives? What is its impact on forms of political participation? How does technological development affect the workforce, productivity or the perception of life and health?
SPEAKERS
Belén Barreiro (@BelenBarreiro_)
Belén Barreiro is a Doctor in Political Science, Sociology and Social Anthropology from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; She holds a Master in Social Sciences from the Juan March Institute of Studies and Research, an institution of which she is a Doctor Member. For more than 20 years, she has dedicated to the scientific analysis of society, as well as to advice in the field of demoscopy. She was a university professor and researcher at various foreign universities. She is the author of several books and academic articles. She writes opinion articles for El País and for other newspapers. In September 2011, she was selected by Tiempo magazine among the 100 most influential Spanish women of the 21st century. In 2016 and 2017, she was also included in the list of The Top 100 Women Leaders, in the category of Thinkers and Experts. In June 2017 he published The Society We Will Be: Digital, Analogical, Wealthy and Impoverished by Planeta publishing house.
José María Lassalle Ruiz
Secretary of State for the Information Society and the Digital Agenda since November 2016. He is a Doctor of Law from the University of Cantabria. He has been Secretary of State for Culture (2011-2016), Deputy for Cantabria from 2004 to 2012, Spokesperson for Culture of the Popular Group in the Congress of Deputies. He has been a professor of philosophy of law at the University of Cantabria (1996-2000) and at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (2001-2003); professor of comparative political systems at the San Pablo-CEU University of Madrid (2003-2006); and professor of the history of ideas at the Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid (2006-2008). Until 2011 he was a professor in the area of philosophy of law at the Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid. He has been deputy director of the Colegio Mayor Isabel de España (2002-2003) and director of the Carolina Foundation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2003-2004).
