VINCENT F. HENDRICKS, Attention Economics and Fake News (8 June 14:00, Maersk Tower 17.15.92)

Foredrag — More information on 1984 and Philosophy can be found here: http://www.opencourtbooks.com/books_n/1984.htm Although the year 1984 is hurtling back into the distant past, Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four continues to have a huge readership and is helping to shape the world of 2084. Sales of Orwell’s terrifying tale have recently spiked because of current worries about alternate facts, post-truth, and fake news. 1984 and Philosophy brings together brand new, up-to-the-minute thinking by philosophers about Nineteen Eighty-Four as it relates to today’s culture, politics, and everyday life. Some of the thinking amounts to thoughtcrime, but we managed to sneak it past the agents of the Ministry of Truth, so this is a book to be read quickly before the words on the page mysteriously transform into something different. Who’s controlling our lives and are they getting even more levers to control us? Is truth objective or just made up? What did Orwell get right―and did he get some things wrong? Are social media opportunities for liberation or instruments of oligarch control? How can we fight back against totalitarian influences? Can Big Brother compel us to love him? How does the language we use affect the way we think? Do we really need the unifying power of hate? Why did Orwell make Nineteen Eighty-Four so desperately hopeless? Can science be protected from poisonous ideology? Can we really believe two contradictory things at once? Who surveils the surveilors? --- Vincent needs no presentation, but just in case: Professor of Formal Philosophy and Director of Center for Information and Bubble Studies (CIBS) at the University of Copenhagen; Fake News is also the title of his latest book (with another 1984 and Philosophy author, Mads Vestergaard), already a best-seller in Denmark and Germany and soon to be available in English.