Meetings and Conferences

Living With The Genie

On March 5-7, 2002, 300 people will come together at Columbia University's Low Library Rotunda to discuss one of the great challenges facing our increasingly global society: the governance of scientific and technological change.

"Living with the Genie: Governing the Scientific and Technological Transformation of Society in the 21st Century," organized by Columbia’s Center for Science, Policy and Outcomes, aims to catalyze a national discourse on how to think about and respond to the increasingly complex interactions between societal aspirations and technical advance. One face of this complexity became horrifically apparent on September 11, when we saw our best-designed and most well-intentioned technologies transformed into instruments of slaughter.

"Living with the Genie" will not be a showcase for ideology or familiar debates. Instead, we will consider, as openly and thoughtfully as possible, the profoundly important dilemmas that confront a society struggling to understand and manage the implications of its own ingenuity. How can the unrestricted pursuit of knowledge and innovation best fulfill basic human needs and advance fundamental goals such as equity, justice, and freedom? Such questions may be deeply discomfiting in an age of technological marvel and global markets, yet we shirk them at our peril.

Click here for more information about Living with the Genie.