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The challenges to understanding: a bridge or drifting
By Mustapha Cherif, Philospher, lecturer of International Relations. Director of the UOC's Arabic and Islamic Studies
Whilst, on the one hand, the pace of globalisation increases and the West gains the upper hand in terms of knowledge, the concentration of wealth and the tools of power, its understanding of its neighbours to the south is almost non-existent. On the other, the Muslim world, despite its advantages and diverse nature, remains politically underdeveloped and fails to give sufficient priority to understanding. Lack thereof is one of the main causes of underdevelopment, of mutual distrust, of insufficient exchanges and of conflict. The responsibility for overcoming the challenges to understanding is shared.
[Inaugural Lecture 2009-2010]
Planning and Beyond in the Globalising World
By Alfonso Vegara, President of the Fundación Metrópoli
Globalisation has completely changed the scale of territorial intervention. The global economy has generated continental spaces of economic cooperation and trade. International regulators were created alongside. Similarly, a new spatial culture is needed to accommodate these macro-economic mutations. This paper shares some reflections on what such a new spatial culture could entail and how it would influence the professionals who deal with the built environment.
[Inaugural lecture 2008-2009]
[2007-2008] William J. Mitchell
Intelligent cities
By William J. Mitchell, Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Following a historical journey through the different physical structures of cities, we arrive in the 21 st century, where cities have all the sub-systems that are needed by living organisms: structural skeletons, various layers of protective skins and artificial nervous systems. In this context, to create new intelligence in the cities, we need to combine software and digital telecommunications networks, ubiquitously embedded intelligence, and sensors and identifiers.
The City Car is an example of the comfortable, cheap and sustainable contributions that a smart city can make to citizens' personal mobility. This prototype is a clean, compact and efficient city car, which can fold and stack like a shopping trolley, and charge up on electricity in the meantime.
If intelligent embedded technology starts to be used ubiquitously, vehicles and the different mechanical and electrical systems in buildings can become specialised robots able to respond intelligently to the surrounding environments in which they are integrated. Likewise, resources can be managed in more sophisticated ways, with unimaginable effects on space use models and building systems.
[Inaugural Lecture 2007-2008]
Learning to live together
By Mustapha Cherif, Philosopher and Lecturer at Algiers University
A reflection on some of the aspects that could arise as a consequence of globalisation -or already exist- intolerance, injustice and unhappiness, and a proposal to find some common universal values that could correct this situation using logic, justice and common sense.
[Inaugural Lecture 2006-2007]
[2005-2006] Derrick de Kerckhove
The biases of electricity
Derrick de Kerckhove, Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology and Professor in the Department of French at the University of Toronto
A reflection on the conditions that have made the set of connections that we have possible, the evolution of language with the incorporation of the new information and communication technologies (ICT) and the new characteristics and key concepts of society in the future.
[Inaugural Lecture 2005-2006]
ICT in Education: possibilities and challenges
Martin Carnoy, Stanford University
It analyses whether ICT is suited to transmitting knowledge, particularly to students who are not already highly motivated to learn or well versed in the art of using and interpreting information.
[Inaugural Lecture 2004-2005]
eGovernment for Europe's public services of the future
Erkki Liikanen, European Commissioner responsible for Enterprise and Information Society
eGovernment helps the public sector to cope with the conflicting demands of delivering more and better services with fewer resources. Exchange of good practice and cooperation between administrations at all levels can accelerate adoption, bring savings by re-using proven concepts and solutions, and accelerate availability of pan-European services for citizens and businesses.
[Inaugural Lecture 2003-2004]
[2002-2003] Juan Manuel Suárez del Toro
New technology: an opportunity for humanitarian action
Juan Manuel Suárez del Toro, President of the Spanish Red Cross
The new information and communication technologies are now an irreplaceable part of social and human development, above all because of their ability to accelerate it.
[Inaugural Lecture 2002-2003]
The Internet & Liberty
Manuel Castells, Open University of Catalunya
The Internet is a cultural creation: it reflects the principles and values of its inventors, who were also the first to use it and experience it. Moreover, being a technology for interactive communication with huge retroactive capacity, the uses of the Internet are expressed in its development as a network and in the kinds of technological applications that come along.
[Inaugural Lecture 2001-2002]
[2000-2001] José María Mendiluce
For progressive guidance on new technologies, the Internet: a technological and apolitical revolution?
José María Mendiluce, MEP and writer
The politics of the future in the transition of an individual society to this new network society.
[Inaugural Lecture 2000-2001]
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