Collective Intelligence, Global Challenges and Planetary Wellbeing Interdisciplinary Studies Program Fall 2023 Semester - Barcelona

We live in a new era characterized by globalization and the digital revolution, and by the emergence of new planetary challenges and threats that require global, collective and effective solutions. These planetary challenges and threats include climate emergency, global health, nuclear security, global inequality, migratory movements, tax evasion, global terrorism, digital security and privacy, etc. All these challenges are global, complex, and interrelated. They need a response that is also global, intelligent and effective. An adequate management of them requires a holistic approach such as the United Nations's framework of Sustainable Development Goals and UPF's proposal for "planetary wellbeing". This course will study how global institutions, as well as nation states, cities and others actors, can face global challenges like those mentioned above. Their responses will need to be creative and intelligent. This is why this course will focus on the new ways in which collective intelligence, crowdsourcing methods and public involvement in decision making in general can enhance the quality of global responses to these challenges. Students will be exposed to some successful practical examples of collective intelligence enhanced through new technologies, like the idea of Crowdlaw, which might combine data analysis, machine learning, AI, Blockchain and even virtual reality with the aim of improving public decision making.

The course will also focus on the conditions under which international organizations, states and cities can make or contribute to make international legal decisions that might provide solutions to these problems in a way that preserves democratic legitimacy and justice. For that purpose, this course will combine the study of global governance, and new technologies with political philosophy, legal philosophy, international law and international relations.

After being exposed to all these existing solutions, students will be asked to be creative and work collectively to learn from each other and to find the best solutions to the problems they choose to work in. Each student will have to work on a particular problem, but he/she will share with the rest of the class his/her work and proposed solutions and all students will help each other to refine their final proposals.