Lumina College 恩光書‪院‬ Lumina College

A response to Dr. Wing Tai Leung's talk, "Un-commodifying the World," from Session 5 of the 2018–19 workshop series "The Future of Business in a Technological Age" jointly hosted by Lumina College and the University of Hong Kong's Faith and Science Collaborative Research Forum (FaSCoRe).

The speaker is Dr. Mike Brownnutt, who holds a PhD in experimental quantum mechanics from Imperial College London.

This talk aims to understand the relational order. How do we relate to God, to each other, and to the world around us? Business is often blind to relational factors. (If business exists to maximise profits, it fosters relationship only if that is a by-product of maximising profits.) Techno-values are often antithetical to relational factors. (Relationships is slow, inefficient, and hard to quantify: everything that technology excises.) Now aware of these issues, how do we go forward in our thinking about business and business technology?

It is not possible to divorce the material aspects of life from wider questions encompassing people, nature, and God. Bricks and mortar, for example, are never just bricks and mortar: they have meaning, significance, and purpose; assigned both by humans and by God. In any given situation, there therefore exist multiple, incommensurate goods. Optimising one (such as profit, or speed) without consideration of the others is simple, and entirely misses the necessary complexity of the situation. In plotting a course forward, we must wrestle with the fact that simultaneously optimising, or at very least considering, multiple incommensurate goods is difficult, and nonetheless necessary.

The speaker is Dr. Wing Tai Leung, who holds a PhD in communication from Regent University.

This talk is from Session 5 of the 2018–19 workshop series "The Future of Business in a Technological Age" jointly hosted by Lumina College and the University of Hong Kong's Faith and Science Collaborative Research Forum (FaSCoRe).

Dr. Wing Tai Leung, Lumina College's president, speaks at North Point Methodist Church 教友退修會.

Sometime in recent history people were sold the idea that economic growth was good, and that it was always good. This ties in nicely with the idea that people should consume things – the more, the better – and that people can be seen primarily as consumers. Technology has driven consumption (we get a new phone every year) as it has facilitated consumption (we can extract resources at a rate previously impossible). Economic growth has its place: it has brought people out of poverty and improved living standards across the globe. Endless growth and consumption, however, are significantly problematic. A Christian perspective can help identify the problems, and sketch what form solutions might take. It is up for discussion the extent to which technology – which played a key role in the problems – can play a role in the solutions.

The speaker is Dr. Winnie Fung, who holds a PhD in business economics from Harvard University.

This talk is from Session 1 of the 2018–19 workshop series "The Future of Business in a Technological Age" jointly hosted by Lumina College and the University of Hong Kong's Faith and Science Collaborative Research Forum (FaSCoRe).