This speech was presented as part of the Founding Lab Forum of Ars Electronica 2023. As one of the students of the Founding Lab Summer School, a partnership between IT:U and Ars Electronica, I joined the Conference Task Force. We were in charge of preparing a keynote speech for the conference day, to introduce the students and our own vision for the University of the Future. I was given the opportunity to talk about our values. You can watch the full session on YouTube, my part is between 15:12 and 22:34. Special thanks to all the friends from the Conference Task Force.

The text of the speech was slightly edited for a prose format.

For the last two weeks, at the Founding Lab, we have spent all of our time together, sitting through lectures and working and discussing in the workshop rooms with our facilitators and workshop hosts, or just having meals, having a drink, catching the tram, going back to the dorm, walking through Linz. I must say that, when I got here, I was a bit insecure about how much I could really contribute. But, as the days went by, we shared about ourselves and our experiences, our journey and the things that have gone well and the things that have gone wrong, what excites us about what’s coming, but also what frustrates us. And I slowly realised I did have something to add.

Maybe my sampling is biassed, but it seems like many of us came here with the desire to look for insight into what we should do next. I certainly did. We are all adults of a certain age, with so much to learn, but some of us are still coming to the realisation that the uncertainty of life doesn’t end with your teenage years. What we all have in common is that we are people who have chosen to stay in-between the imaginary boundaries of what our practices should be. And this sounds beautiful, but it’s complicated in practice, particularly for the Digital Sciences. They are collaborative by nature, they cannot be sustained on the shoulders of individual efforts, they are born collective, not just inter, trans or cross-disciplinarian, but post-disciplinarian.

I have been a church leader for many years. One useful thing I’ve learned from the religious context is that we should always be thinking about the intentions, motivations and values at the root of the things that we do. And I’m talking about affections and intimate beliefs, what drives us, what kind of inner world we are cultivating in our own journey. The starting point of the things that we do, and making sure that they are coherent with the outcomes we want to see. I care a lot about the practicalities of the work, but I wanted to give a speech about the type of heart and mind that you should have, if you want to be a part of the people who will build the future of which we are dreaming, right now. Shaking the structures of a world that thrives on exclusion and exploitation, to build our post-disciplinary table, where everyone gets a seat and a say in the conversation, with justice, equality, accessibility, care.

But, I have got to be honest. Recently, I had to admit to myself that I am still not as understanding, open and reasonable with differences, not as I thought I was. Of course, I am not talking about tolerating differences that threaten the core values of the university that we want to help bring forth. I’m talking about the things that we bring to the table when we take our seat — the way we talk to and about others, our beliefs about life and work, priorities, methodologies, manners, facilities, equipment, skills, vision, willingness, hard work, funding. I study Social Sciences in an Engineering school, which is just as hard as it sounds, and I am constantly challenged by my peers, because I still have a bunch of hierarchies in my head, about the ways of living and working that are good and valid, and the ones that are not. Maybe some of you relate to what I’m saying, but I hope that there are more of you who can teach something about the type of respect, compassion and flexibility we should have to meet others exactly where they are, for who they are, and do something together.

The bottom line is that we want to work not just for personal gain, but to bring about change. The frustrations and limitations are multiple, there are so many things that we aren’t happy about, but we will achieve very little if our good intentions don’t match the nature of the things that we are trying to build, and if our actions don’t follow our intentions. It’s in the big things but it’s also in the details—how we see each other, and how we treat each other—, which influence the dynamics of everyday life in our shared spaces. The way we negotiate how much we are willing to give, and how much we are willing to lose, who is willing to compromise, and give up some of their resources, in the name of others. Communicating for resolve, and not for conflict, being open about what works and what doesn’t work, standing strong on your ground of what you think is fair, and being open to being wrong, or recognising that not all disagreements will have a clear answer. Dealing with different ways of expressing ideas and thoughts, respecting that some people need more space than others. Acknowledging each other’s hard work. Being less judgemental, more patient in figuring out other people’s boundaries, and being mutually open to negotiate them. I don’t believe in good or bad matches, I think that anything is possible, as long we want to see it work out.

I am very people-centred, I care about the connections we make the most, but the thing I loved the most about being here was watching how us, as students, and the Founding Lab team, adapted to each other. How the Austrian punctuality made room for other approaches to being on time, and the students who were late at first made the effort to leave the dorm a bit earlier. The team’s commitment to being transparent about the limitations, and what were the things that mattered the most. It wasn’t all perfect, but it was sufficient, and it filled me with the right kind of hope. As such, I wholeheartedly believe that there is a way for all of the challenging things that we want to work on from now on. Let’s be even more specific, ten years from now, in the Summer of 2033, I want to be able to look back to this exact moment, the Founding Lab, and have the clarity of a decade to be so glad that I came, and proud of the things that will come to exist because we have come together. Some results will take longer than that, some experiments will fail, not all strategies will thrive, but I hope that, as founders, we will be patient, without losing our passion, and the hope that the things that we want to build will be possible one day because, today, we have chosen to sit and listen, and act.