There is hardly any other place in the world where digital technology and culture are as closely intertwined and at the same time as diverse as in California. Since the emergence of digital culture, it has been interspersed with myths and ideals, some of which guide action, others of which are used to publicly justify business models. Journalist and Thomas Mann Fellow Magdalena Kröner will talk with literary scholar Adrian Daub and entrepreneur Mia Dand about the role that values such as difference, inclusion, and innovation play in Silicon Valley and the extent to which they are actually realized.

Mia Dand is the CEO of Lighthouse3, a strategic research and advisory firm based in Oakland, California. Mia advises large organizations on responsible innovation at scale with new & emerging tech like Artificial Intelligence (AI). She has a successful track record of leading complex cross-functional programs at the intersection of business, data, and governance for global companies. Mia is the founder of the global Women in AI Ethics initiative, creator of the annual 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics list, and Women in AI Ethics online directory, the leading resource for recognition, recruitment, and empowerment of talented women in this space.

Adrian Daub is a professor of comparative literature and German studies at Stanford University, and the director of Stanford’s Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research focuses on the intersection of literature, music, and philosophy in the nineteenth century, and he is the author of several books published by academic presses. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The New Republic, n+1, Longreads, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His most recent book is What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley (FSG Originals x Logic, 2020).

Magdalena Kröner works as an essayist and art critic in Düsseldorf and the U. S. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Quarterly, Monopol, and Die Zeit. Since 2016, she focuses increasingly on the semantics and ethics of digital culture and technologies. She just started a new series of essays for Kunstforum International: Digital Bodies  - the new image of man at the interface of technology, art and body politics. Magdalena Kröner is a 2021 Thomas Mann Fellow.