Today more than ever computers have taken center stage in our lives: science, economy, politics, art, there is no single human endeavour that has been left unaffected by Information Technologies. Whether this impact is positive or negative, is still very much up for debate.

People connected to the Internet can enjoy an unprecedented amount of information and computing power at their disposal, but more and more negative side effects of a widespread use of computers are brought to our attention: automation bias, echo chambers, shortened attention spans, job displacement, election hacking are just a few examples. The latest AI-hype fuelled by computationally feasible machine learning techniques have brought to reality philosophical topics previously relegated to mental experiments and theoretical discourses. The trolley problem has never been more popular thanks to self-driving cars.

The need to conduct a systematic and well-informed discussion in a context ranging from theoretical and mathematical problems to labour and resource exploitation issues is evident. The broken dialogue between young and aggressively finance-oriented tech moguls and old-school politicians fumbling for regulation of little-known phenomena is not promising.

HaPoC’s appeal to historical and philosophical reflection aims at addressing this shortcoming. We aim to bring together researchers exploring the various aspects of computation: historians, philosophers, computer scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, designers, manufacturers, practitioners, artists, logicians, mathematicians, each with their own experience and expertise, all part of a society impacted by computation, and all necessary to the creation of a better discourse.