Please register below to attend this lecture, which will be presented online as part of the "Solidarity and Strife: Democracies in a Time of Pandemic" initiative, funded by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and co-sponsored by Social Science Matrix and the D-Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. This event will also be co-sponsored by the Algorithmic Fairness and Opacity Group.

Abstract
One of Friedrich Hayek's most celebrated essays — "Competition as a Discovery Procedure" (1968) — tells us tantalizing little about the existence of other such procedures. Hayek's insistence that competition is the surest and most reliable technique of eliciting innovation is well reflected in today's digital landscape, dominated as it is by digital platforms, with their stated goal of facilitating market exchange. Yet, beyond Hayek's favorite bugbear of central planning, there surely must be other ways of "discovery" — even if they do not currently "scale" as well as the techniques of competition. This talk will explore the intellectual and political benefits of placing "discovery" at the center of our debate about the future of the digital public sphere and suggest potential directions for adequate policy-making on the issue.

About the Speaker
Evgeny Morozov is the author of The Net Delusion (2011) and To Save Everything, Click Here (2013). He is also the founder and the publisher of The Syllabus, a knowledge curation initiative. He holds a PhD in History of Science from Harvard University.