1. 회원 여러분의 건승을 기원합니다.

2. 서울대학교에서 <제34회 해외저명학자 초청특강/제207회 언론정보학 포럼>을 개최합니다. 이에 다음과 같이 안내해 드리니, 관심 있는 회원님들의 많은 참여 바랍니다.

- 다 음 -

■ 제목

- Predictions without Futures / Technology as Myth

■ 발표자

- 홍선하 교수 (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

■ 일시

- 2026년 12얼 11일(금) 12:30 ~ 14:00  

■ 장소

- 서울대학교 관악캠퍼스 IBK 커뮤니케이션센터(64동) 501호

■ 신청 방법

- 온라인 접수(https://forms.gle/vm97dN8Q2AQKFzLR9)

· 접수 마감: 2026년 12월 8일(화)

■ 강연자 소개

- Sun-ha Hong examines forms of uncertainty, doubt, myth, and (dis)belief around AI and data-driven technologies. He is associate professor in the Department of Communication and the School of Data and Information Sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill, with prior roles at Stanford, Simon Fraser University, and MIT. He is the author of Technologies of Speculation: The Limits of Knowledge in a Data-Driven Society (NYU Press, 2020), and Predictions Without Futures: Repetition and Stagnation in Dreams of Artificial Intelligence (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming).

■ 초록

- Critical thinking about technology is constantly impeded by the soporific effect of the hegemonic language around it. We are told that progress is ‘inevitable’, data is ‘objective’, or that information is ‘empowering’. Yet at the same time, the dominant technological visions of the future, from robot maids to automatic factories and predictive policing, are recycled across generations and even centuries without being fulfilled. The idealised connection between data, information, and rationality breaks down whenever technological systems encounter real people and complex social environments. An explicitly non-technological language is becoming more essential than ever for critically understanding the relationship between technology and society.

This talk explores mythological approaches to tackling these problems. Data, algorithms, and models operate as totems that embody broader fantasies about objectivity or progress. Dominant technological futures, like ‘smart cities’ of the 2010s or machine learning of the 2020s, are maintained through ritualised cycles of hype and prediction, populated with unbuildable prototypes, speculative financing and bombastic manifestos. Today production and circulation of these technological myths is becoming increasingly centralised and authoritarian - in which a select few visionaries declare what counts as utopia, and the masses are instructed to follow or be left behind.