On August 14, Manege was hosted a lecture by Yanina Ledovaya entitled “The future – people, robots, or forces of nature: are we worried about the right things?”

Social networks entered our lives a relatively short time ago. At the same time, trends that have been around for quite a while -- such as climate change, the aging of the population, the depletion of natural resources, growing economic inequality, and the possibility of new viruses and epidemics appearing -- stem from previous decades, during which humanity did not much concern itself with rectifying such matters.

At the lecture, we discussed studies centered on the future and on humanity. We tried to show that the internet and social networks not only bring loneliness and short attention spans, but also provide many opportunities, bearing in mind that it is possible to limit the amount of time spent there and control the quality of content consumed. But the wide-scale and long-term social and environmental changes that are now objectively looming over humanity and the planet bring with them a much more inevitable and pessimistic future. And, most likely, they are what should concern us right now.

The speaker, Yanina Ledovaya, is a psychologist and market analyst at JetBrains. While working at St. Petersburg State University Yanina studied human behavior in social networks. Her most recent focus has been the study of trends and the future, as well as using psychological knowledge in the creation of high-tech products.

You can watch this lecture on our YouTube-channel.

General Partner for the exhibition — SIBUR.

Partner for Manege’s educational program — The Mikhail Bazhenov Foundation.

The lecture is sponsored by the St. Petersburg State University Alumni Association.