
Digital Futures for Education: Dark Machines
Date and time: 12 March 2025, 15:00 – 16:30 CET
Title: Digital Futures for Education: Dark Machines
Speaker: Victor Galaz, Stockholm University
Where: Digital Futures hub, Osquars Backe 5, floor 2 at KTH main campus
Directions: https://www.digitalfutures.kth.se/contact/how-to-get-here/
OR Zoom: https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/69560887455
Refreshments will be served.
Registration is required: https://www.kth.se/form/665f08452a0ce3e6f73d14bd
Questions? Please contact Teresa Cerratto Pargman, Associate Director Outreach, Digital Futures: tessy@dsv.su.se.
How is Artificial Intelligence, Digitalization and Automation Changing our Living Planet? This question posed by Victor Galaz in his recent book Dark Machines (Routledge, 2025) frames the next conversation about books at Digital Futures.
Digital Futures for Education is delighted to invite Victor Galaz, Associate Professor in Political Science at the Stockholm Resilience Centre to discuss some of the central arguments made about how AI and digitalization is shaping the planet and the risks posed to society and environmental sustainability.
Victor Galaz is an Associate Professor in Political Science at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, Sweden, and Program Director at the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. His research explores the political and social dynamics of climate crises and systemic risks, and the influence of information technological change on a human-dominated planet. He is the author of Global Environmental Governance, Technology and Politics: The Anthropocene Gap (2015), co-author of Biosphere Code: A Manifesto for Algorithms in the Environment(2015), and editor of Global Challenges, Governance, and Complexity: Applications and Frontiers (2019).
Moderator: Daniel Pargman, Associate Professor in Media Technology with a specialization in Sustainability at the Department of Media Technology Interaction Design at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Daniel leads the Sustainable Futures Lab research group together with his colleague Elina Eriksson.
Welcome to a new series of conversations about books where we invite the book authors to present and talk about the intellectual work behind the book, their motivation, sources of inspiration, and expectations. Each semester, we choose one or two provocative books, and they provide us with ideas, concepts or facts that can help us reflect and debate the ongoing digital transformation of the society of which we are part and parcel.
Unlike other formats, books are unique as they invite us to slow down, engage deeply with stories and facts, and imagine that things can be otherwise. They are a golden opportunity for self-reflection, communication, and development.
As Ursula K. Le Guin and Susan Wood (1979) couldn’t have written it better: “We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel- or have done, thought and felt or might do, think and feel – is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become”. p.31. Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1979). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”. Ultramarine Publishing.
Through Digital Futures for Education, we aim to:
- Stimulate an interdisciplinary dialogue across national and international universities to identify social demands and needs locally and globally.
- Bring about a well-founded debate on the possibilities of digitalization and data-driven education in Sweden.
- Cultivate critical and generative discussions on the ongoing research educational programs and projects at KTH, Stockholm University, and RISE.
- Align research goals and agendas in educational technology with everyday sociotechnical practices.
- Promote more inclusive conversations on digital transformation in higher education.
We invite you to be part of the conversation on digital transformation in education by suggesting topics and potential speakers to Teresa Cerratto Pargman, Associate Director Outreach, Digital Futures. Please send your suggestion to tessy@dsv.su.se. Write “Digital Futures Outreach” in the subject of your email.
Digital Futures for Education consists of conversations and events that bring together key actors from academia, civil society, and the private and public sectors. Its mission is to provide a colloquial space for discussion and reflection on the digital transformation in education and the role of universities in today’s complex societies. The goal is also to build a community with key national and international educational actors.