Hi all, earlier there was a post asking if anyone had organized an open panel for 4S 2017 — please take a look below! Please circulate to those you think would appreciate this, and direct all inquires to Colin Garvey <garvec@rpi.edu <mailto:garvec@rpi.edu>> 44. Making Sense of Autonomous Technologies, 40 Years Later Organized by: Colin Garvey, RPI <garvec@rpi.edu <mailto:garvec@rpi.edu>> ; Langdon Winner The 40th anniversary of the publication of Langdon Winner’s seminal work, Autonomous Technologies: Technics-out-of-Control (1977), provides an opportunity to reflect both on an increasingly automated Anthropocene as well as the field of STS itself at the opening of the 21st century. In 1977, when electronic digital computers still occupied entire rooms within the citadels of the military-industrial-university complex, AI and robotics were still largely arcane avocations of a few research teams and entrepreneurs. Today, smartphones with millions of times the power of those machines reside in the pockets of billions of people around the world; robotic beasts crawl over rubble to win prizes from DARPA; and consumer automobiles are (finally) beginning to drive themselves. Forbes magazine has already named 2017 “The Year of AI,” and China is poised to outpace the US and Japan combined in total numbers of industrial robots. R&D funding for autonomous technologies is at an all-time high, as are both optimism and fear about the futures they promise. Meanwhile, some of the world’s leading democracies struggle to function under conditions of electronically mediated information overload. How are we making sense of these technological transformations forty years after Autonomous Technologies? And how should we be? What still applies? What has changed? What have we learned since, and what remains insensible to us? This panel welcomes contributions on autonomous technologies, broadly construed to include historical and contemporary reflections as well as speculative and future-oriented pieces. http://www.4sonline.org/meeting/open_panel_topics_34_66 <http://www.4sonline.org/meeting/open_panel_topics_34_66> Submission link: http://www.4sonline.org/meeting <http://www.4sonline.org/meeting> Best regards and see you in Boston! Colin Garvey PhD candidate, STS @ RPI