Politikk og vitenskap – behovet for flervitenskapelig til- nærming til en politisk håndtering av en pandemi

En samtale med Dag Svanæs 6. november 2020

Abstract

Dag Svanæs is involved in the Norwegian public debate on how to handle the Corona pandemic. During the last year, he has written articles, participated in many debates and given lectures on the pandemic. He is the initiator of the website Coronakritikk.no, where they document the debate and present scientific knowledge about the pandemic.

Svanæs is a professor at the Department of Computer Technology and Informatics at NTNU and studies the interaction between humans and technology. Svanæs received his Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) from NTNU. His research over the last 15 years has been in the fields of HCI and Interaction Design. He has built up a full-scale usability laboratory that allows for simulation of use scenarios with multiple users and multiple devices in realistic settings – primarily for the medical domain. This allows for evaluations and empirical studies of embodied interaction. The basic theory that most inspires his work is the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger. This was also the topic of his 2000 PhD. This shows Svanæs’ interest in technology, philosophy, health and the ability to have knowledge to predict what could happen in the future.