Five days before Blacksburg residents hit the polls, they can discover how the constantly changing age of technology is altering the political process.
A free forum sponsored by Virginia Tech's Choices and Challenges project will begin at 8 a.m. Oct. 30 at the Lyric and the Graduate Life Center at Donaldson-Brown.
"These changes -- we're right in the middle of them," Choices and Challenges Project Director Daniel Breslau said. "We're right in the middle, and it's very important now to sort of take stock in what's happening."
Breslau, who is also an associate professor in Tech's Department of Science and Technology in Society, said no one really knows where the technological revolution will lead the world, or even political life.
"Do these information technologies make our world more democratic?" Breslau asked. "It's a question that we don't know the answer to."
The Choices and Challenges project was created in 1985 to bring experts together with the rest of the community to discuss pressing topics relating to science and technology. Although the project presents a public forum annually, this one is unique in its placement directly before the presidential election.
But Breslau emphasized that political campaigns will not be the only topic covered.
"We didn't want to make the focus only on political campaigns," Breslau said. "We tried to find a range of panelists who know about different areas of politics."
The project was able to rope in three experts involved in different aspects of the political or technology fields. This main forum, which Breslau will moderate, will begin at 11 a.m. at the Lyric.
Doug Schuler, an instructor of such courses as Community Information Systems and Global Citizenship at Evergreen State College and the director of the Public Sphere Project, is one of the three panelists.
Schuler said his main message to students would be that they "have a big stake" in the technology changes that are occurring, and they should become involved in those changes.
"I'd like to take a step back and not just completely look at all the details of how it's changing, but try to get a bigger, more general view and sort of remind people that we're watching this revolution and we don't have to just be watchers," Schuler said. "We can be shapers of technology."
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