[bioundgrd] April 19: Careers in Line with your Values?

[Rachel McPherson]

Employment or Irrelevance:  Is it possible to 
have a job that is in concert with your values?

Speaker: Chris Csikszentmihályi, the Muriel 
Cooper Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at 
the MIT Media Lab, and director of the Computing 
Culture Research Group.

When: Wednesday, April 19, 2006, 6:30pm
Where: MIT, Stata Center (32 Vassar Street), R&D Common (4th floor)
http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?mapterms=stata+center

Refreshments will be served.

Summary: How can we imagine education, research, 
and engineering as systems that could promote 
positive change?  What are the impediments?

Ten years of teaching in science/technology 
institutions has shown me that there is a 
downside to teaching young technologists to use 
their skills for peace rather than harmful 
technologies: they won't be able to get a job. 
The problem lies beyond the level of individuals: 
The systems of education, ideation, production, 
and distribution all put tremendous pressure on 
ethical scientists and engineers to produce work 
that conflicts with what they want to be doing. 
Few of us really get to decide, in any meaningful 
way, what we're going to work on.  We will focus 
on the possibilities and future directions.

In addition, I will present several working alternatives.

This is an event is sponsored by Pugwash.

Chris Csikszentmihályi is the Muriel Cooper 
Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT 
Media Lab,and directs the Computing Culture 
Research Group.  He has spent over ten years 
creating technical interventions that demonstrate 
alternatives to the logic of markets, progress, 
and common sense.  His designs include products 
for dystopian futures, scientific experiments 
that haven't been repeated,technologies to 
improve hip-hop, and even work that directly 
confronts the Pentagon's (better funded) 
autonomous killing machines.   His talk will 
elaborate where "proof of concept" meets 
progressive politics.