Claire Amos

Speaker - Ramez Namm The world is bumping up against multiple environmental and natural resource hurdles: climate change, peak oil, fresh water shortages, and rising prices for food, minerals, and commodities of all sorts. At the same time, a growing population and a surge in the wealth of the developing world is increasing consumption. Can innovation keep pace? What are the true limits to growth? How do we overcome the challenges that face us? This session will provide an overview of the key natural resource and environmental challenges that face us, the on-the-horizon innovations that hold the promise to overcome them, and the policies that would best encourage innovation in those critical fields. The true limits to economic and natural resource growth on Planet Earth will be presented and discussed. Energy is a moral issue. Last five years are the warmest in modern history. Coal industry is being disrupted. Many coal companies are going bankrupt. Due to plunging cost of clean en...

Presented by Future Crunch Kicking off Day 2 with some intelligent optimism, prepare yourself for a musically-inspired story about the human race you don’t hear very often. Diseases are being eradicated, war and famine are decreasing, human rights are improving, and millions of people are creating an economy that doesn’t cost the earth. Our species has made some incredible progress in the year 2019 – we’re just not hearing a lot about it. It’s time to get up to speed. We know the challenges we face. This is how, with boldness, creativity, and revolutionary technologies, we are rising to meet them. About Future Crunch We are a group of scientists, artists, researchers and entrepreneurs that believes that science and technology are creating a future that is more peaceful, connected and abundant. We’re determined to share that story. Our expertise ranges from political economy, biotechnology and data science, to music, art and philosophy. We use our diverse skills and knowledge to pr...

Speaker - Alix Rübsaam While some predict that the rise of Artificial Intelligence will mean the “end of humankind”, others see no future without algorithms and data-driven systems. What sense can we make from these predictions and warnings? This talk unpacks the ways in which current computational systems have impacted our culture and sense of self, explore software as a metaphor for our humanity, and challenge existing ideas about what it means to be human in the digital age. Superintelligence Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies is a 2014 book by the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom from the University of Oxford. It argues that if machine brains surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could replace humans as the dominant lifeform on Earth. AI Poses an Existential Threat to Humanity The intelligence of machines will exceed that of humans Computers will breach the limits of human cognition...

Speaker - Alex Gladstein Notes below from the first half. View video above for full talk. What is the role technology will play in shaping our future society?   Some technology steers governments and corporations in a more authoritarian direction, increasing control over individuals and, over time, crushing creativity and innovation. Other technology — decentralized technology — helps protect freedom, privacy, and curiosity. Democracy itself can be thought of as a decentralized technology that helped liberate humans from tyranny. The internet, of course, decentralized knowledge and put it in the hands of nearly everyone on earth. Encrypted messaging is a technology that allows us to communicate without fear. And now, Bitcoin is breaking the monopoly over money that governments and corporations enjoy. This talk will walk through these narratives and focus on why decentralized money, especially, matters for the future of freedom. The Panopticon The panopticon is a disciplinar...

Speaker - Pia Mancini The implications and opportunities of many of the technological breakthroughs happening now and in the near future will be nothing short of disruptive to our lives, our businesses and industries, and society as a whole. We are transitioning to a new model of the State and society, but we are still clueless as to what it is or how it should look like. A new understanding and set of tools are required to figure out how we will solve one of the greatest problems facing humanity today: how will we govern ourselves? Our democracies are 500 years old. It made sense back then that the few made decisions for the many because it was impossible for everyone to participate. If we want to have an impact on policy we have to be experts in specific fields or commit our lives to politics. We have no opportunity to participate in design. We are 21st Century citizens living with 19th Century institutions that were conceived with 15th Century information technologies. Apathy is...

Speaker - Niraj Lal “The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed” wrote William Gibson in 1993. The intersections between science and politics are fraught: there are dissonances between how technology advances and how social policy can distribute it equitably. With an exploration of the four limited resources of the universe: energy, time, space and matter, this talk explores the human interaction with each, highlighting what technology can do for social justice in three examples: The democratisation of energy Sharing distilled knowledge and persistent wisdom in an age of the constantly New Dragnet surveillance and methods to resist it Supporting our #futurebydesign to be just, unrestricted, and evenly distributed. Solar panels will soon be cheaper than plywood Global distribution of wealth World’s wealthiest 10% own 85% of global wealth Top 10% own $100,000 worth of assets. May of us are in the top 10%! Our limited resources include: Energy Time Matter (r...

Image Source Earlier this week (Mon-Wed) I was lucky enough to attend the inaugural SingularityU NZ Summit in Christchurch. Since then (Thurs-forever) my brain has a been a whirl as I have tried my best to understand and appreciate exactly what it is I learned and heard at the event. The saying "the more you know, the more you know you don't know" kept coming to mind. I went in to the event fairly confident I was abreast technological developments, what was in store and what that meant for education. I came away from his event patently aware that whilst I am relatively aware of technological developments, my knowledge really only skipped across the surface like a skittery ol' skipping stone and my understanding of the impact it is going to have on education was way short - I need to stop thinking Blue Sky High and need to start thinking Intergalactic Intelligence Building! The SingularityU NZ website describes the event as bringing "the world’s top s...

Claire Amos: Realising the Future of New Zealand Education   from Festival of Education on Vimeo . On the eve of the inaugural SingularityU NZ Summit I am continuing to build some very genuine levels excitement about what I might learn and how it might reframe my thinking about the future of education. It has been awesome to be part of what feels like a groundswell of educators who share a passion for futures thinking and educational change and it has been equally exciting to see this become a theme of large scale conferences such as Ulearn and EduTech and the many smaller corporate organised edu-conferences that have popped up in recent years. However alongside this excitement this excitement there has also been a sense of frustration. Whilst there is absolutely a growing demand for educational change, there is also sense that these "edu-changemakers" still, in a sense live within a bit of a bubble. Head to any conference and you see the same lovely group of educa...