Technology

When you're blending digital and physical, you'd better know how things are made. When I talk to my students it's shocking how few of them have ever been to a factory, and how few of them know what a CNC machine is or how goods get from A to B efficiently.

NPR Host and Senior News Correspondent for Over Three Decades

You need one strong relationship in your life to remain sane. You need a relationship that doesn't depend on digital transmission! You need somebody who you understand deeply, who you can talk to directly, who can give you a reality check when everything coming through your computer and phone is bewildering.

Evolutionary biologist and podcaster known for critical COVID-19 vaccine commentary

We have layer upon layer of novelty, and today we are in an era of hyper-novelty. The rate of change of the novelty we face is so fast that it has outstripped our evolutionary capacity to keep up.

Evolutionary biologist and podcaster known for critical COVID-19 vaccine commentary

With technology, we're creating a lot more hammers – and with more hammers, we're able to find more nails. The question is whether those hammers are being made for the right purposes, and whether they will serve the right purpose. I often worry that when we talk about health-tech – it almost seems that in certain areas the tech is taking over the health.

While people have been worried about AI being embedded in humanoid robots from the science fiction world, our lives have been shaped and influenced by AI which makes tens of billions of decisions each day about what we see, and how we communicate.

Dean of Cornell University's Blavatnik School of Engineering

AI has been an area of technology for many decades, but the advances of the past five-years show us why this is one of the major technology events of the last several centuries. We haven't really had a technology like AI in the history of technological development – the closest analogy would be the movable type printing press, which came to the fore at the beginning of the enlightenment, some five hundred years ago.

Dean of Cornell University's Blavatnik School of Engineering

We didn't want to be the best shipper of plastic, nor the best streaming technology, we positioned ourselves as a great place to find stories. We could make that true in the DVD world and the digital world through things like our taste-engine meaning that whether the product came in the post or through a wire, customers saw it as the same.

Co-Founder of Netflix & Streaming Pioneer

Digital media has allowed a complete bypass of those structures – there's less control around power – and people can amass huge followings for totally irrational reasons. Social media has broken the stranglehold that hierarchy often has in organisations for better and for worse.

Political scientist & author specializing in authoritarianism and democracy

It took Jesus 2000 years to reach a billion people. It took Larry Page, I think, around 12 or 10. It took Facebook around 7. And it's not unthinkable that something will happen today that will reach a billion users by the end of the year.

Former Google Executive & Author of "Solve for Happy

I think the answer, really, in my view, is that we cannot control them because they are smarter. As simple as that, we only know that the smartest hacker in the room will always find a way through our defences. So maybe we should stop our arrogance for a minute.

Former Google Executive & Author of "Solve for Happy

These are technologies that are autonomous in many, many ways. They are independent in many, many ways – they have free will. They can replicate. And that makes a difference because then we teach them how to learn, but we have no idea what they will do with that ability to learn and develop intelligence.

Former Google Executive & Author of "Solve for Happy

There's also a great metaphor from the world of automotive technology. The main naysayers against cars were probably the drivers of carriages in the streets of New York. At some point, the Model T factory was open. And suddenly you're looking around, you're looking at the friend that is driving a car and you're saying, wait a second – he doesn't need a barn to house your horse.

The problem is that you put cells in the same vat and ask them to grow and they're producing ammonia, you're going to have a nice glass of urine! We must solve all of that!!

Our envy of birds certainly helped drive our will to fly, however I think Leonardo was probably held back by trying to emulate the flapping of birds; that doesn't work with human muscles. We had to free ourselves of the perception that you need to flap your wings.

Evolutionary Biologist & Author of "The Selfish Gene

Over this 99.9% of human existence, when technology advances, population advances and counterbalances any potential increase in human prosperity. Suddenly once technological progress reaches a tipping point, families start to invest in education, they economise on the number of children, and technological progress is converted into richer people rather than into more people.

Economist known for unified growth theory explaining long-term economic development

Consider for a moment residents of the city of Jerusalem in the Roman period and whisk these individuals in a time machine nearly 2000 years forward to Ottoman Jerusalem. Those individuals from the Roman period will be able to adapt nearly instantaneously. But if you whisk these individuals an additional 200 hundred years forward to present day Jerusalem, these individuals would be entirely shocked. Past knowledge will be largely obsolete. New technologies would appear as witchcraft.

Economist known for unified growth theory explaining long-term economic development