Technology

To scale? you have the stars aligned- timing is everything. When we created the first personal digital assistant, the Newton... we were probably 15 years too early. Even some of the best computer scientists in the world didn't realise that at the time, we needed Moore's Law to continue doubling processing power every couple of years for at least a decade before it was practical to build products like iPhones.

CEO of Apple Computer Company during the 1980s and 1990s

ISIS and Al Qaeda don't radicalise anybody, what they do is tip people over the edge. The online phenomenon just speeds it up.

People find that you don't have to go around managing the maintenance of a building with a tool belt anymore, you can go around with an iPad. You've still got to operate buildings, but our buildings have to be technically oriented as we're challenging them to be greener. So, how do you go from a tool belt to an iPad?

Mayor of San Francisco (2011-2018) & First Asian-American Mayor

The workplace of the future is hard to predict specifically, but one thing we can predict is that we will increasingly rely on human intelligence and creativity as opposed to human capacity to perform repetitive tasks.

Co-Founder of Slack, Former CEO & Creator of Flickr

You have to put people first; you have to think about the society you're living in, what's good about it, and what kind of world you want. You have to also consider how that technology can have a positive impact on the world.

CEO and Chairwoman of Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation

If I could snap my fingers today and make every STEM program in the world into a STEAM program I would do it now. The idea that science, technology and mathematics are enough to build a world forgets the importance of the humanities.

CEO and Chairwoman of Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation

The internet is humanity at scale and without limits; and that will require common goals, and common discussion for us to determine healthy ways forward. The internet is magnified with human will, and we have every opportunity to allow it to become a democratizing force for humanity.

CEO and Chairwoman of Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation

We don't currently have the accountability mechanisms in our digital life that we do in our physical life. Physical society has had tens of thousands of years to build cultures and norms, but we haven't yet figured out how this works online.

CEO and Chairwoman of Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation

It's shocking how quickly this innovation [the internet] has become woven into the foundation of everything that we do. In just 30 years, the internet and the world wide web have gone from being generally unknown to consumers to being involved in every aspect of life, and necessary for almost everything. There is no healthy society without a healthy internet.

CEO and Chairwoman of Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation

The systems we now use exist at a scale that's actually hard to comprehend as human beings. On Facebook, you are one of several billion people and at that scale, it's easy to become a number, or simply a wallet. At that scale, it's very hard to make any meaningful change as an individual.

CEO and Chairwoman of Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation

We are a dark-deprived society in this modern era, and we need darkness for the release of melatonin for healthy sleep. Without melatonin, we will not sleep sufficiently.

Sleep scientist and author of "Why We Sleep

Compare the 1600s to the present day, and what we do now would seem like magic to people from that era. That just shows you how dramatic the transformation of society has been as a result of science and technological advances.

Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry for Ribosome Structure Studies

Information overload means we are so bombarded with information that we can't make sense of it and so we become tribal, emotional and irrational, surviving using heuristics rather than facts. You can see this reflected in how our politics is changing – it's becoming more tribal, emotional and polarized.

Our boredom threshold has declined to the point where we're unable to stand idle in an elevator for ten seconds without pulling out our phones. There's also an epidemic of social avoidance, particularly among younger people, as the skills required for face-to-face interaction are more demanding.

Psychologist & Author specializing in behavioral psychology and irrational decision-making

The concentration of power in technology corporations is a moral and political problem that we simply don't have a precedent for. More people use Facebook than speak English for example, so the implications of Facebook, as just one platform, are at the scale of language itself.

Our apps and platforms are addictive by design. We know this both because the tech titans behind them have admitted it publicly, and because the dominant apps and social media platforms use the same suite of techniques that are well-proven to ensnare us.

Psychologist & Author specializing in behavioral psychology and irrational decision-making