Technology

There's no sensible definition of people without technology. Our relationship with technology is complex and helical. As technology changes over time, so do we, and we have a situation therefore where we develop technologies, adapt, and then need new technologies to solve the side-effects of the first.

Pioneer of Virtual Reality & Critic of Social Media

Social media was kind-of created to destroy humanity, in a literal sense. The first notion of the implications of such networks was provided by B. F. Skinner who spoke of the dangers of people who- on networks- were too free, too creative and too uncontrolled.

Pioneer of Virtual Reality & Critic of Social Media

Instead of militaries fighting militaries, we now have militaries or military motivated agents that are able to activate civilians in each other's countries. Social media is global national security threat, and one that we're not even spending billions of dollars to protect against.

Design ethicist & founder of Center for Humane Technology

If Russia or China try to fly a plane into the United States, they'll be shut down by a USAF F35. Meanwhile, if they try and fly an information plane into the United States they're met with Facebook and Google algorithms that run an auction to enable them to get the maximum audience, for the cheapest price.

Design ethicist & founder of Center for Humane Technology

We are now 10 years into the mass warping of the human collective psyche because of a lack of checks and balances. To even begin to correct what's already happened means we have to wake up to the challenge of a world which must collectively wake-up from a mass delusion that has warped our trajectory as a civilisation.

Design ethicist & founder of Center for Humane Technology

Technology claims to be showing us a mirror of what was already present in society but in reality, technology is a funhouse mirror with a feedback loop that's engineered to show us the most egregious parts of society that are better at keeping our attention.

Design ethicist & founder of Center for Humane Technology

Technology is systematically undermining human weakness, the costs are huge. This is what degrades our quality of life and how we make sense of the world. This is what destroys our ability to form identity, to form relationships and make choices.

Design ethicist & founder of Center for Humane Technology

You don't need to be a celebrity to suffer from what social media does to you; it's happening to everyone. For me, I have to find a routine and discipline with how I use my public image.

Indian actress known for independent films and *Chandni Bar* role

The shift to impact is like the technological revolution- in fact, it is built on technology. Shifting to impact also doesn't necessarily mean you cannot achieve even greater profits. In todays' world, given consumer, talent and investor preferences – it's actually better to go to risk-return-impact if you want to maximise profits.

Founder of Social Venture Network & Pioneer of Social Impact Investing

The only way social media can work is if you are incredibly authentic. If you try and cultivate and curate too much it can be very obvious and transparent.

British Pop Singer & "Murder on the Dancefloor" Artist

I felt strongly that search- as a product- was just going to continue to face more and more revenue pressure, forcing us to show more and more ads, and inevitably making the product worse over time.

Former Google Executive & Founder of Perplexity AI

Search started as a free product meaning it cannot get any less expensive for the user. You pay nothing, but the benefits of reaching larger and larger portions of humanity accrue to the provider, not to you.

Former Google Executive & Founder of Perplexity AI

I didn't like the rampant tracking and the fact that Google and Facebook effectively ran some of the largest information gathering networks on earth (and that's a very charitable way of describing it).

Former Google Executive & Founder of Perplexity AI

The potential for blockchain is to accelerate the digitization of financial markets. Blockchain gets everyone excited as it has the potential to convene these different parties together to reach the necessary agreements, in that sense it is a unique enabler, a coordination mechanism. That has massive implications on the structure of our financial markets.

With blockchain, you may not even need to bring someone to court, because the evidence is already there- on the blockchain! Producers can sell their products and services to people they don't know and need not trust—- so that expands their market.

Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics; Mechanism Design Theory Pioneer

There are two key features of blockchain that make it, potentially, a very useful technology from an economic perspective. First, the data about transactions are posted on many public sites thus giving these data an immutability that makes disputes easy to avoid. Second, although the data are in some sense public, they can be encrypted so that a particular party learns only those aspects that she needs to know.

Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics; Mechanism Design Theory Pioneer