The Triumph of Human Empire | Rosalind Williams | Talks at Google

Rosalind Williams visited Google's Cambridge MA office to discuss her new book on February 26, 2014.

The Triumph of Human Empire surveys the overarching historical event of our time: the rise and triumph of human empire, defined by the dominance of human presence on the planet. The book examines the works and lives of three well-known writers (Jules Verne, William Morris, and Robert Louis Stevenson) to illuminate the event of consciousness at the end of the l9th century, when humans realized that they were close to mapping the entire globe and that the global frontier was closing. Human Empire is about a still-unfolding event of consciousness, as grasped by three writers exceptionally successful in conveying its depth and significance.

Rosalind Williams is an MIT professor who studies the interplay of technology and imagination on topics ranging from consumer culture to fictional underworlds. She served as MIT's first Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education and later as head of the MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society. She frequently consults with other universities in the U.S. and abroad on engineering education and has received honorary degrees from two of them. Besides giving numerous invited lectures, Rosalind Williams has been interviewed on WGBH, WBUR, and Dutch national public television and will soon appear on The BBC Forum. She has served as president of the international Society for the History of Technology, which recently awarded her its highest honor, the Leonardo da Vinci Medal. This is her fourth book.

[letMeSayThatInIrish]

Best talk I've heard on any subject for a long time.

[icRegions]

Rosalind Williams quotes from The Ebb-tide: "Throughout the island world of the Pacific, scattered men of many European races and from almost every grade of society carry activity and disseminate disease." Published in 1894, it goes on to say of these men, "Some prosper, some vegetate. …  And there are still others…who continue, even in these isles of plenty, to lack bread." Not everyone on the frontier flourishes and the collateral damage to natives is unrecorded for the most part. We are the beneficiaries today, the victors for now, but what if a high technology race decided to colonize us? A highly negative scenario, but one whose exploration might develop insight for the thoughtful, if not our unsustainable society. The book series Allies of Humanity and/or Life in the Universe by Marshall Vian Summers are a good place to begin. 

[roguenealer]

It was ok didn't go to in depth on things what was a great brush over