HTLab webinar series comes to a successful end

Monday 11th April saw the conclusion of the project 'From Man to Technology. The Dialogues of Humane Technology Lab'. In media partnership with Rai Scuola, the initiative was organized by Università Cattolica's Humane Technology Lab and consisted of three webinars. The events involved experts from the world of business, academia, and public administration and were moderated by technology & innovation journalists. The topics were covered in line with the Laboratory's mission to study the interrelationships between technology and the different dimensions of human experience. The events attracted and actively involved thousands of students and insiders, proving that the human-centric approach applied to digital technologies is central in the public and academic debate. The Director of the Lab, Professor Giuseppe Riva, attended all the webinars, framing them within the activities of the Humane Technology Lab. 

The series was inaugurated by the webinar 'What do the Humanities have to do with Technology?'. It was attended by Annachiara Sacchi, a journalist for Corriere della Sera, Roberto Villa, President of the IBM Foundation, and Marco Carlo Passarotti, Full Professor of Linguistics at Università Cattolica and future coordinator of the new master's degree course in Computational Linguistics. Roberto Villa highlighted the crucial importance of the human contamination of technology, arguing that 'the labour market will increasingly demand, from IBM and other companies, professionals who will be able to translate large amounts of data by combining humanistic, digital and technological skills.' 'The need to train professionals with interdisciplinary skills is due to the fact that each industry sector will have a specific AI system to extract knowledge,' Villa also said. 

Digital technologies are now at the heart of every individual's daily life, and Covid-19 has speeded up this process by clearing the way for practices such as working from home, which was uncommon in the pre-pandemic period. Smart Working was the subject of debate in the second webinar on 30th March, which hosted Stefano Besana, EY Wavespace Leader and author of "The Future of Work," and Cristina Tajani, expert advisor at the Italian Ministry of Labour and Social Policies. Tajani, in response to a question from Andrea Bettini, a RaiNews24 journalist, focused on collective bargaining as a regulatory tool for remote working. According to Tajani,  'the dialogue between trade unions and company representatives is a useful exercise to redefine the way work is organized and combine company objectives with the specificities of each sector.'

The cycle concluded with an interesting panel discussion on the relationship between creativity and technology. The webinar involved  Giovanni Emanuele Corazza, President of the Guglielmo Marconi Foundation and Full Professor of Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Bologna, Andrea Gaggioli, Full Professor of General Psychology at Università Cattolica, and Chiara Placenti, a journalist for Radio inBlu2000. According to Corazza, technology 'can certainly help creativity, giving voice to modes of expression that were unthinkable up to 30 years ago', but it can also generate 'negative effects on the attentional span, which is fundamental for the immersion and incubation time that creativity requires.'