Technology Hypes: How to deal with inappropriate exaggeration?

  • Maximilian Rossmann (Speaker)
  • Jascha Bareis (Speaker)

Activity: Talk or presentation / Performance / Speeches › Performance, Talk or Presentation - not at conference › Academic

Description

This presentation discusses "hype" as inappropraite exaggeration from the empirical perspective of rhetoric and discourse theory. Calling technology "hype" goes beyond epistemic evaluation of facts ("debunking") but measures and critiques what means to call for attention and how popularity of hegemonic narratives become inappropraite for the audience, context, and situation. At the examples of the current AI hype, Elon Musk's Cybertruck presentation, and the panic buying at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic we discuss that what constitutes inaproppriate exaggeration, however, is not obvious or easy to generalize. Instead, we suggest engagiong with historical case studies to learn how power-relations, setting, and subtile communications matter when dealing with exaggerted claims about the future and derive policy recommendations.

The invited talk and discussion was part of the "Nurkse Reading Seminars" in Spring 2024 at Tallinn University and represented findings from the Special Issue on Technology hypes and the ERC NanoBubbles project.
Period11 Apr 2024
Held atTallinn University of Technology
Degree of RecognitionInternational