Greetings, everyone. Good evening. Class will come to order. Well, that doesn't work in the class I teach.

We are of course, uh, embarked on Purdue's Sesco centennial hundred and 50th anniversary. And as I hope everyone here knows, have chosen to commemorate it with a year long ideas festival, uh, inviting the, um, uh, best and brightest minds we can find on a variety of topics to our campus and, um, uh, to discuss.

Where technology's taking us and, um, what it, what it means. The, um, this is not a new idea at Purdue. And tonight's, um, and this today and tomorrow's event, Don or Doom, our fifth such meeting, um, is, uh, uh, a, a major, uh, figure, a ma major fixture in this year's event. But it also was a prototype really for all the, uh, events that we've been having and those that are to come, um, a hundred years ago.

The, the world believe was on the, also in a, in a time of incredible scientific transformation, new inventions, every bit as remarkable to the people of that time as the ones we've been experiencing were everywhere. Uh, the steam engine, the, uh, the railroad telegraph, telephone, electricity, uh, the sewing machine, things were changing people's lives in a very, very, uh, direct way.

And many people came to the conclusion that science was infallibly benevolent and benign and would lead humanity straight upward. And then a few years later, millions were dead at the hands of that technology, which had outrun people's ability to understand its implications. And so, uh, it behooves us, uh, to take some time, especially at this place where so many of the breakthroughs, uh, of today and tomorrow are happening and are being born.

It's, it's natural that we would have a curiosity. About, uh, technology, it's pros, it's cons, and it's, uh, it's possible, uh, the possible difficulties it brings. Uh, some of us think we have an obligation, a responsibility to think is deeply about those questions as anybody, anywhere. And so, uh, tonight and tomorrow we're very much a part of that.

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