{"id":12529,"date":"2013-09-28T19:47:36","date_gmt":"2013-09-28T18:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=12529"},"modified":"2013-09-29T13:57:50","modified_gmt":"2013-09-29T12:57:50","slug":"my-saturday-spent-thinking-about-where-i-want-to-spend-the-rest-of-my-life-its-called-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=12529","title":{"rendered":"My Saturday spent thinking about where I want to spend the rest of my life – it’s called the future"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent all of today at an event entitled \u00a0“FUTUREFEST: SHAPING THINGS TO COME”<\/strong><\/a> which was held at the\u00a0Shoreditch Town Hall (build in 1862) in east London. We will spend the rest of our lives in the future but we spend so little time thinking about the future. So I found it a fascinating occasion. I reproduce below the notes from my iPad.<\/p>\n

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Speakers at the event generally young (at least to me) with very good gender and ethnicity representation.
\nMany speak without notes and all speak very fluently.
\nDominant clothing colour of speakers is black.<\/p>\n

Welcome by Geoff Mulgan<\/strong>, CEO of NESTA:
\n80th anniversary of “The Shape of Things To Come” by H G Wells
\nNESTA funds groups looking at the future
\n“What’s posterity ever done for me?” – Groucho Marx quote<\/p>\n

Jessica Bland<\/strong>, futurist at NESTA:
\nFlown a drone and bought Bitcoins<\/p>\n

Pat Kane<\/strong> – curator of event:
\n“It is a sell out.”
\n“Think of it as Glastonbury for the mid century.”<\/p>\n

1) Nick Karkaway<\/strong> – philosopher:
\n“Rats get all the best technology first – which bugs me,”
\nIf our intelligence is transferred into a box – what rights does the box have?
\nWhat about if we share our intelligence until it becomes a group intelligence?
\nIn what sense are we an individual? We cannot be conceived or live as an individual.
\nThe nature of our parliament is the antithesis of the notion of the wisdom of crowds and ‘crowd sourcing’.
\n“Nothing is so technologically unimaginable as to be conceived as magic.”
\n“Be wrong in interesting ways.”<\/p>\n

2) Berlolt Meyer<\/strong> – German social psychologist with bionic left hand to compensate for birth defect (cost = 50,000 Euros):
\nHe can do things with his techno hand that cannot be done with a normal hand – such as revolving in 360 degrees!
\n“Bionic Bertolt” = product of a Channel Four television series called “How To build A Bionic Man” about putting together all the latest technology for replacing body parts and functions including artificial blood
\nRats have been given extra memory through implantation of a memory chip
\nWhen the engineer who developed this chip was asked if it should be used for humans, he answered: “That I don’t know.”
\nProblems about such technology:
\n– Who will be able to afford the latest, very expensive technology? Who would be entitled to such advanced technology?
\n– What if bionics evolve? Technology could provide more functionality than the normal human
\n– Is it right to replace an existing limb by an artificial one that is more technologically advanced?
\n– If technology changes how people perceive disability, could disability confer an unfairful advantage? Example: Oscar Pistorious
\n[Next day the “Observer” newspaper carried this interview<\/a> with Meyer.]<\/p>\n

3) Peter Gregson<\/strong> – cellist:
\nTalks about why the arts matter
\nChallenges the type of people produced by exclusive learning of science subjects
\nLearning is not simply about earning
\nTechnology cannot empathise and listen and care
\nAn app cannot solve all our problems.
\nIs classical music still relevant? Popularity is not the same as relevance.
\nConcludes by playing a short piece on his cello<\/p>\n

4) Paul Mason<\/strong> – Channel Four culture editor:
\nCapitalism is an organism .. It has a beginning, a middle and an end .. It mutates … We got wrong what the end would be.
\nSlide = four Kondratieff waves in the US financial markets of 1789-2003
\nEach wave of capitalism driven by a wave of technological innovations
\nWe are living through a messed up start of the fifth wave delayed by the printing of money
\nCharacteristics of Wave 5.0
\n– rise of the network
\n– growth of information goods
\n– development of non-hierarchical structures
\n– arrival of the eco-determined markets
\nInformation goods have destroyed the notion of scarcity and so destroyed the price formation mechanism
\nPhysical goods now have information content that can be replicated by 3D printing
\nCorporate responses:
\n1) Monopolise information eg Amazon, Google, Big Pharma
\n2) Skate on edge of falling prices and expanding demand
\n3) Develop non-market forms of production eg Wikipedia
\n“Everything is pervaded by the fight between the network and the hierarchy.”
\nThe networked individual will not accept an unchanged capitalism.<\/p>\n

5) Sadie Crease<\/strong> – professor of cyber-security:
\nAll solutions to world problems – like food scarcity – depend on cyber-security
\nWhat does it mean to be citizens of cyber-space? What is our carbon footprint in cyber-space?
\nThere are coding errors that can be employed by the malevolent.
\nThese errors can be purchased on “the dark web”.
\nThese hugely complex systems are hard to understand and protect.
\nThe future is not about data but the intelligence in data (big data)
\nWe will all be potential victims of attack because we will all have embedded technology.
\nIn the future, there will be digital viruses like digital superbugs.
\nShould we develop a new form of governance where there are no secrets and no need for leaking?<\/p>\n

6) David Runciman<\/strong>:
\nWhat is the future of democracy?
\nVery little change in politics over the last 25 years.
\nYet most rapid change in technological change
\nNo political revolution because we have had a technological revolution.
\nGovernments better at using the technology to control citizens than citizens are at using the technology to control governments whether in democracies or dictatorships.
\nSome think we are moving to “technocraries” where technological elites rule eg China. Control but no adaptability.
\nIn Italy and Greece, where normal democratic government was suspended, it was replaced by bankers. Adaptability but no control.
\nBad alternative – these two systems rival each other.
\nGood alternative – “rebooted democracy” = not e-democracy but scaling down to level of the city and scaling up to level of continent.<\/p>\n

7) Vinay Gupta<\/strong>:
\nTalks about open source housing – examples in Haiti
\nThe city is where you go to make enough money to move to the country.
\nAbout half the world lives on land where they grow their own food in unhygienic conditions
\nThese people could leapfrog past western citizens to live in rural units with low-cost, city-level standards of technology such as clean water, solar panels and tablet computers.
\nWe have to look to this model because there is not enough metal, let alone enough money, for 9 billion to live in western-style housing with two vehicles each.<\/p>\n

8) Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg<\/strong>:
\nPlastIc bags were seen as better than paper bags, plastic bottled water was seen as better than glass bottles, but they have created new issues – so we assume that design and technology makes things “better”.
\nSynthetic biology presents new opportunities for design
\nA kind of chemical yoghurt could be used to diagnose problems in the body that would show itself in the creation of particularly coloured excreta
\nMentions project called synthetic aesthetics – can you design nature? can you design a synthetic computer?<\/p>\n

9) Tom Kenyon<\/strong>:
\nTalks about the future of schools –<\/p>\n