Socrates Spain, in Partnership with Aspen España
Please click here to see a tentative agenda fro the weekend. Click here to register.
How Technology is Changing Us: How We Think, Relate, and Lead – moderated by Stephen Balkam, founder and CEO, Family Online Safety Institute
Digital technology has become imbedded into our lives, impacting how we think and remember, mediating our relationships and how we connect, communicate, and interact with each other. It is having a profound impact on how we govern and manage our organizations, companies, and countries, and how we educate future generations. Do our devices enlighten us or create an unhealthy dependence? Are Google, Facebook and Instagram making us collectively more informed or distracted? What will be the overall effect on Millennnials and the legacy of their generation? Are there grounds for optimism or is there an urgent need to wake up to how this tech tidal wave is overwhelming our lives and institutions?
This seminar will explore how the way our brains and relationships are being re-wired in the digital age, and the impact these fundamental changes are having on the art of leadership.
The moral limits of markets: Can markets do social good? – moderated by Clive Crook, Columnist and Member of the Editorial Board at Bloomberg View
Consumerism is an essential aspect of the market-based economy and has long been important to our collective identity. In recent years, however, market values—once limited to the realm of economic transaction—have crept into nearly every aspect of life: education, health, law, athletics, and family relationships, further widening the gap between rich and poor. Is a world where price tags drive nearly every decision a world in which we want to live? Can our democracy operate freely in conditions where everything—political campaigns, college admission, citizenship, the right to pollute, human organs, etc.— can be bought or sold? Are there goods that markets shouldn’t bear? If not, what kind of changes can citizens and government make to allow ethics and morals back into the equation?
With a growing network abroad, the Socrates Program launched its first international seminars in 2012. The Socrates international seminars attract participants from both the host and neighboring countries, and the US. In addition to the intellectual exploration that characterizes the Aspen seminars, the weekends incorporate official meetings, tours, and activities to complement the seminar experience.