Members of the Princeton community receive priority; members of the public are welcome if space is available. Lunch is provided.

Please join us for a lunchtime book talk with Brett Frischmann, to discuss Re-Engineering Humanity.

From Cambridge University Press: “Every day, new warnings emerge about artificial intelligence rebelling against us. All the while, a more immediate dilemma flies under the radar. Have forces been unleashed that are thrusting humanity down an ill-advised path, one that’s increasingly making us behave like simple machines? In this wide-reaching, interdisciplinary book, Brett Frischmann and Evan Selinger examine what’s happening to our lives as society embraces big data, predictive analytics, and smart environments. They explain how the goal of designing programmable worlds goes hand in hand with engineering predictable and programmable people. Detailing new frameworks, provocative case studies, and mind-blowing thought experiments, Frischmann and Selinger reveal hidden connections between fitness trackers, electronic contracts, social media platforms, robotic companions, fake news, autonomous cars, and more. This powerful analysis should be read by anyone interested in understanding exactly how technology threatens the future of our society, and what we can do now to build something better.”

Bio:

Brett Frischmann joined Villanova as The Charles Widger Endowed University Professor in Law, Business and Economics, in 2017. In this new role, professor Frischmann promotes cross-campus research, programming and collaboration; fosters high-visibility academic pursuits at the national and international levels; has the ability to teach across the University; and will position Villanova as a thought leader and innovator at the intersection of law, business and economics. Brett came to Villanova from Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University, where he was director of the Cardozo Intellectual Property and Information Law Program (2011-2016) and a Professor of Law. He is an affiliated scholar of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, and a trustee for the Nexa Center for Internet & Society, Politecnico di Torino. Brett most recently served as the Microsoft Visiting Professor of Information and Technology Policy at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy.

Brett’s work has appeared in leading scholarly publications, including Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Journal of Institutional Economics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, University of Chicago Law Review, and Review of Law and Economics, among others. His forthcoming book co-authored with philosopher Evan Selinger, Being Human in the 21st Century: How Social and Technological Tools are Reshaping Humanity (Cambridge University Press), will examine techno-social engineering of humans, various ‘creep’ phenomena and modern techno-driven Taylorism. Brett’s books on the relationships between infrastructural resources, governance, commons and spillovers include Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources (Oxford University Press, 2012); Governing Knowledge Commons (Oxford University Press, 2014, with Michael Madison and Katherine Strandburg); and Governing Medical Knowledge Commons (Cambridge University Press, 2017, with Michael Madison and Katherine Strandburg).

This event is co-sponsored with The Program in Law and Public Affairs.