Technology

The internet has a natural pressure to bubble us up and vulcanise society, it makes it less comfortable for us to be around people who think differently, and more comfortable to be around people who think the same as us.

Technology presents a difficulty for our world right now. Everyone is simultaneously an individual who can have a conversation, and a broadcaster. So we're getting on social media and training ourselves to think in broadcast mode, but then we go out in public and get our wires crossed.

If I say to you 41, it's data. If I tell you 41 is the temperature in centigrade, that's information. If I tell you 41 is the temperature, in centigrade, of a human patient, that really is information – in fact, it's in danger of becoming knowledge because of the contextualisation it gives you.

Right now, it's a bit like the early stages of the universe. Lots of hot plasma gas everywhere, but structure takes time to emerge… We have the opportunity to re-imagine this, it's not a deal that's been done, and it's not too late to imagine a different way of organising, regulating, collecting, contributing and benefiting.

We didn't just make technology, it made us. In the modern context, this phenomenon terrifies some people and excites others- but it's going to happen. We have to understand how humans and their tools and technologies blend at scale – it's going to be an absolutely fascinating journey.

Technology isn't a 'thing,' it's a social structure that people act upon the universe through. The social structure has incentives, roles and governance which determine the meaning and effect of the technology, not the engineering itself.

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

Humans haven't been able to survive in any of our environments 'raw' – we've made fire, made shoes, made hunting tools… we've never had to experience being adapted to an environment 'as it is,' and so there's no sensible definition of people without technology.

Pioneer of Virtual Reality & Critic of Social Media

We need a new Manhattan Project to rebuild trust in a world that's been deliberately attacked at its cultural foundation. This is not about state actors nuking each other's electricity grids but attacking each other's trust and cultural infrastructure which is just as critical.

Design ethicist & founder of Center for Humane Technology

There's a joke within Facebook that if you want to know which countries will have a genocide in the next couple of years, look at the ones that have Facebook free basics.

Design ethicist & founder of Center for Humane Technology

Imagine if Coca Cola said, 'well, we *could* take the sugar out of our drink, but how else would we give the world diabetes?' – we have information diabetes.

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 that we spent a trillion-dollars developing. 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. They're met with a white glove that takes them directly to their target.

Design ethicist & founder of Center for Humane Technology

Our past technologies, such as hammers, didn't manipulate or influence our weaknesses… they didn't have a business model dependent on building a voodoo doll of the hammer owner that allowed them to predict the hammer owner's behaviour, showing them videos of home construction such that mean they use the hammer every day. A hammer is just sitting there patiently waiting to be used.

Design ethicist & founder of Center for Humane Technology

Technology claims to be showing us a mirror of what was already present in society- racism, conspiracy theories- but in reality, technology is a funhouse mirror with a feedback loop that's engineered to show us the most egregious parts of society… those parts that are better at keeping our attention. The mirror gets more and more warped, but we mistake it for an honest and neutral view of who we are.

Design ethicist & founder of Center for Humane Technology

I worry that the emotional side has these days too much dominance over the rational. We think we're being rational, but unconsciously we're being swayed by the power of some of the images and words that we've seen, particularly on social media.

Former UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator & National Security Adviser

We wouldn't want to live in a world of full transparency. That is a world where I can see into your brain, and you into mine. Perhaps one day this will be possible… we will be able to plug into each other's brains, and I will experience the world as you, and you as me…. A hive-mind… I just hope I'm not around when that technology arrives.

Former UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator & National Security Adviser