Media Evolution: Recent Episodes
Video Archive – The Conference by Media Evolution
Media Evolution is a membership organization that help media industries to innovate and grow.
The videos in this podcast are generated at our annual conference The Conference and lectures we arrange throughout the year.
http://www.mediaevolution.se
Think about your childhood – what made you feel safe at home?
For many of us, our childhoods were unplugged. Now, times have changed. We’re wired into tech at every turn. Parents have turned into safety officers—some offering trust and guidance, others building walls of protection. But for kids, the question is "What’s lurking in the dark?"
IKEA, in collaboration with Our Normal Association, dives deep into this dynamic, exploring life from the perspective of kids. For adults, a digital security system is a shield, a sense of control. But for a child, it’s a looming threat, “Will this thing eat my toys?” Today’s smart technology prioritizes adult fears and comforts, leaving kids out in the cold.
The future of design is inclusion. It’s the union of mental peace and physical safety. It’s about the creation of spaces where everyone feels secure. Technology must evolve to serve every member of the family, not just the grown-ups. The role of the designer is to find the edge cases. When we design for empathy, we shape a future where everyone belongs.
Kickstarter helps bring projects to life and as the first crowdfunding platform with $7 billion pledged and 239,000 projects funded, so what new concepts have emerge with this aid? In the session Laura Feinstein, Senior Design and Tech Editor at Kickstarter, dives into how fashion and textile creators are breaking out of labs and turning cutting-edge materials research and circular products into must-see showstoppers—both online and in real-world showrooms.
Imagine walking in shoes made from coffee grounds, or accessorizing cactus leather bags, or your home lit by lamps manufactured from orange peels. What if I tell you that it’s for real? Kickstarter helped turn these ideas into products.
Laura talks of Kickstarter as a way to provide a platform for creators to redefine innovation. The financial support allows them to produce small runs, fund product development, and real-world R&D, demonstrate market needs, and tell their stories in their own words. From transforming sustainability research into the thriving Nutshell Coolers to transforming a family-run Paris fashion house into the digital era with vegan materials, Kickstarter shows a system where creativity meets opportunity.
“It’s very fun to make AI tools magical. [...] But when you make AI feel airy, you remove the possibility for people to ask questions. So it’s better to make it approachable.”
Trudy is an active technology enthusiast who is convinced that AI tools can be as useful as electricity. By providing real-life examples and related metaphors of ceramic mugs and paper cups, the recent MIT graduate firmly believes that everyone can - and perhaps should - be able to understand AI tools and how the algorithm works “under the hood” in order to be better informed when making decisions around its usage and implementation in organisations.
Trudy conveys a clear and easy-to-follow explanation of how AI generation differs from the everyday search on our internet browsers. While search engines retrieve information from existing websites that the algorithm judges relevant, AI generation patches up an artifact which replicates human speech and predicts “the most likely next word” based on patterns observed in human interaction. AI literacy is hence of utmost relevance now that AI tools have reached their most capable and accessible stage yet.
“As we eat food we are consuming things that we don’t even know what’s in there, because they are unknown and we don’t even know where to look for them.”
What really makes up the food we eat? Dr. John De La Parra (he/him) invites us to decode the magic and mystery of our food, challenging the conventional ways we understand its composition and impact. He argues there is a deep knowledge often overlooked when we rely solely on the scientific data provided by traditional nutrition labels and composition databases.
The reality is that our food contains thousands of complex chemical compounds, each with different properties and effects on our bodies. Plants, he explains, are constantly producing unique compounds as a defense mechanism, many of which have surprising benefits for human health. These secondary metabolites add layers of mystery and magic to what we consume daily.
By understanding the complex chemistry of our foods and the effects of agricultural practices, we can create a more just and informed global food system that benefits both health and the environment.
”What future will we dream when we dream with plants?”
Jemma (she/her) is an artist, writer and curator working with plant intelligence and vibrational medicine. If you wonder what plants sound like – check out this talk. After a guided visualisation, where we imagine going back to a state of being before our human form – we see ourselves as plants. But what is your texture, your aroma – as a plant?
Jemma believes we can design futures beyond our perceived limitations if we engage with more-than-human life. Plants make up 87% of life on our planet, so why shouldn’t we listen to them? There is proof that plants have agency, not only intelligence – they are active. By not listening to them we risk abusing them, which will ultimately lead to us abusing ourselves.
Jemma encourages you to ask yourself what you're not hearing or seeing. There is so much to learn when we don’t even fully comprehend our own consciousness as humans. When we start to include all forms of life, we begin to see that we have been guilty of ”brain chauvinism” for much too long. It's time to change.
“We are the time travelers we’ve been waiting for”.
Gustavo Nogueira de Menezes – Gust for short – founder of Temporality Lab, takes us on a whirling tour of wisdom on the philosophy of time and temporality. Or should we say, temporalities. For every society has had distinct experiences of being, doing and existing in their relationship with time. Take the very calendars we use – 12 months of varying lengths for some, and lunar cycles for others.
“I don’t have time!” We’ve all heard – or said – the refrain. In response, Gust asks, “How can we think of the future if we are so exhausted consuming the present?”
Gust, who received appropriately timely birthday wishes from the crowd at The Conference, explains the concept of time was colonised and we were taught to evolve in a single narrative. A decolonial approach is possible in which we embrace the pluriversal nature of the concept, by recognising the ancestral and contemporary as equally important and intertwined. Instead of erasing what has been done before, our origins can teach us how to innovate and be ‘ancestors of the future’.
“Could AI ever be a common pool of resources?”
Researcher Somya Joshi makes a compelling observation: the same extractive narratives of 19th century industrialisation are being reproduced today in our venture to conquer the AI ecosystem. Somya highlights how major technological shifts such as the Green Revolution relied on the premise that automation would always lead to progress, and the myth around this pattern persists in the case of AI.
Somya reminds us that following the major revolutions seen in history, power eventually remained in the hands of the elites. In parallel, other authors have discussed the “unequal geographies and distributive effects” in the extraction and manufacturing stages involved with progress and technology. The footprint of labour has traditionally been made invisible in the process, and the same now applies to the footprint of materials such as water, copper and silicon, mainly sourced in the Global South.
Somya calls for the normative act of imagining equity to ensure a sustainable and more just future by seeing AI as a common resource for global use.
The Conference's main partner IBM hosted a talk during Wednesday’s Getting Grounded session focusing on approaches on AI, its uses and adaptations and our relation with it.
Artificial intelligence provides us with new ways to communicate through products. In her talk, Mary Wallace portrays how AI can be used to improve consumers’ retail experiences within various industries, such as the beverage and fashion industry. For example AI can be implemented to bring life to inanimate objects like clothes, drinks and beds.
For brands, integrating AI into products serves as a gateway to other services. By collecting and analysing consumer data, brands can get to know their consumers on a deeper level. This allows brands to further personalise the consumer experience through their products. Thereby adding value to consumers as well as allowing brands to stay in the forefront of AI development, and differentiate themselves on the market. Consequently, Wallace states that “the product is no longer a product”.
“We need an infrastructure that deepens our spiritual connection to the world – a spiritual infrastructure.”
Filmmaker, designer and futurist Anab Jain (she/her) wants us to keep asking ”what if”. How might we flourish by living in a different way than today? You might know her work with the foresight and design studio Superflux from the Venice Biennale, where they created a banquet for 12 different species in 2021. That’s just one example of how we can imagine the future through storytelling. And not just one future but many different possible futures.
Anab introduces two ideas for rewilding our minds and the planet: Expanding the self through interconnectedness, and intergenerational ecological time. A great example of the latter is the ”seven generation stewardship” employed by some indigenous peoples in America. It’s a way of safe-guarding the planet for use at the same (or an even better) rate than now.
Dive into Anab’s inspirational talk that takes us from Bhutan, to London and back again.
The Conference's partner IKEA hosted a talk during Wednesday’s Getting Grounded session focusing on IKEA most recent findings on play, design and why it all matters more than we think.
Why is play important? And why is IKEA so obsessed with playfulness? Anna Granath and Maria Törn are ready to answer those questions, freshly armed with insight from IKEA’s recent children’s play report.
Simplicity, Inclusivity, and Playfulness. Those three words guide IKEA’s design philosophy.
Play is seen as the ticket to learn better, to improve psychological safety, and subconsciously acquire maths, physics, and social skills. But the clearest answer is the one we hear from children. It’s fun to play. We get to imagine. It makes us happy.
Adult concerns affect children’s play. Global worries about the pandemic, war, climate, and economy have created stress for children. And play is not fun anymore. Struggles with money, space, and even playful capacity, mean that not all children have the same kind of play. Reassuringly, the best cure is play itself. IKEA’s report reveals that families are prioritising play and spending more time playing together.
“There’s a little bit of a play revolution out there”
What can we do? Embrace the diversity of play, from imagination to exploring outside, playing sport and being creative. Adopt play as a mindset. Imbue everyday situations with the possibility of playfulness.
So, maybe we should all be obsessed with playfulness and for good reason.
The Conference's main partner IBM hosted a talk during Wednesday’s Getting Grounded session focusing on approaches on AI, its uses and adaptations and our relation with it.
Matt Candy presents the numerous opportunities that generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) offers, and provides insight into IBM’s human-centred approach to leveraging new technologies in their business.
Gen AI has an immense potential to grow GDP when used in smart and efficient ways. By learning how to integrate AI in all sorts of daily tasks, organisations can improve their business and, among other things, provide better customer experiences. How enterprises adopt and execute will define whether they unlock the larger scale of AI, according to Candy.
He emphasises the need for a human-centred approach, which is the fundament of IBM’s model for integrating Gen AI in their own organisation. This means using people’s actual tasks as the starting point for where to add value with Gen AI, as well as letting technology shape how we recruit in terms of desired skill sets.
According to Candy, people are only able to use Gen AI successfully when becoming an AI creator rather than a user. He provides us with what he considers to be the equation for Gen AI success in his talk.
What connects Leonardo DiCaprio with the Grateful Dead, a 16th century Dutch diplomat, and a tech CEO recently arrested in a French airport. To answer we have to zoom out and look back. Ten years after three days ago, the last decade of the old millennium, revolutionary 1789, and further back still. Where did we come from and where are we going?
Dan Shefet is a lawyer, specialising in European law and Human Rights as they apply to tech. Dan highlights the critical junctures where domestic law and fundamental rights intersect, points of conflicts catalysed by the explosive growth of tech and the international high seas of cyberspace.
Are social media sites responsible for the content they host? At which point does the right to be forgotten contravene the right to free speech? And what about Leo? Spanning centuries, Dan’s talk demonstrates the necessity of understanding our past in order to answer the questions that shape our future.
“How do we protect something we do not love and do not understand?”
Seán Ronayne is the ornithologist who came up with the idea to sound-record every bird in Ireland, to show the world what beautiful and unique creatures they are. He is also the main character in the documentary Birdsong.
With his extraordinary projects capturing soundscapes and imagery from nature’s most precious wildlife, he urges people to come together and protect the nation’s birds, as 63% of them are at risk of extinction. His collections are representations of the physical loss that are a consequence of the exploitation of Irish nature. He uses music and sound as a way of connecting with people and making them feel and understand the importance of preserving biodiversity.
Birds’ mimicry of each other and other species is a symbol of the worlds’ interconnectedness. As Seán points out, extinction is not just happening in the Amazons but “here on our doorstep”, and “the actions that we take in Sweden and Ireland have a ripple effect on the world.”
“We are living in a world where we do not agree.”
The spoken word artist Joshua Idehen kicks off the session by delivering a humorous performance about the flaws of various ideologies, the world according to your mom, doing the washing. Aiming to unite the audience through music, he showcases the power of humor, language and love when speaking across differences.
Q&A from the session Structuring Structures with Jenny L Beijar, Marco Guadarrama, Emily Best, Sarah Watson and Györgi Gálik
Katlyn’s talk digs deep into a critical question: "How did we get here?" She challenges us to confront a deeply embedded paradigm—the "Twin Transition" of sustainability and digitalization.
She covers three aspects. First, she critiques how we define environmental impact as caused by CO2, ignoring the other serious issues this oversimplified focus creates. It’s a convenient narrative that silences dissenting voices, labeling them "anti-climate."
Then she asks, "Who really benefits?" and exposes the power dynamics at play—who’s included, who’s excluded, and who’s left with the waste. And finally she ask, “If we shifted this system to its idealized end state - full “green” and digital transition - what is its vision?
She leaves us with a haunting thought: Even if we achieve a full "green" digital utopia, who decides what's acceptable? Sometimes the truth is uncomfortable, and maybe we need to sit with that discomfort, face the complexity, and—most importantly—be honest.
“Underneath the experience of loneliness is always a longing”.
It is not part of our human nature to isolate ourselves from others – yet this is increasingly the reality of modern-day societies. Our physical environments (such as car-centric cities and single-person homes), our technologies (such as social media), and our attitude towards work (i.e. careerism and the false promise of busyness) are no longer affording us the same opportunities to connect as before.
Monika Jiang warns us that “connection must not be consumed” and urges us to slow down to realise what it is that we need and long for – and to be able to give our undivided attention to the people around us. Through examples such as the Offline Club in the Netherlands and the Human Library in Denmark, we can perhaps start to shape new (and old) communities. Because when we return to ourselves, we can also return to the world – and the understanding that we are not separate from nature but rather a part of it.
“Trust is an outcome – not something you can design for.”
For many years designers and users alike have been pushing for “seamless” technologies and services – but this approach has not always prioritised safety, privacy, and TRUST. We’ve been obsessed with making things easy to use, rather than making things that are transparent, accountable, and trustworthy.
This dilemma is at the core of Projects by IF and Valeria Adani’s work. According to Adani, every time you invent a new technology, you’re also designing a new set of risks and potential harms, whether you intend to or not, and this correlates with potentially diminishing trust on the part of organisations.
By promoting a human-centred perspective in data, Valeria and her colleagues showcase the importance of trust in technology. At the dawn of the rise of AI, the first technological innovation coming from commercial rather than public institutions, the role of trust will have an increasingly stronger impact in determining the success of a company.
The Q&A from session Time, Trust and Wisdom with Monika Jiang, Gustavo Noguiera de Menezes and Valeria Adani
Are we in control of technological megasystems, or are they in fact controlling us? By taking on a critical approach to modern technology, Georgina Voss emphasizes the need to collectively challenge the systems that underpin our world.
Humans suffer from hubris in terms of using technology to exert control. Voss draws a parallel to the film Jurassic Park, highlighting the role of technological systems in our everyday life. She explains how these systems affect us both emotionally and physically although they are invisible to the human eye. As were the imaginary dinosaurs to the actors in the movie. But, “how to see what isn’t there?” Through digital screens we can have new experiences in virtual worlds, which might evoke unsettling emotions. But just like in Jurassic Park, the systems that are there to protect us can in fact also become a threat.
The theme of control connected to systems becomes more relevant with complex and demanding technologies evolving rapidly. Voss urges us to take a critical perspective on the systems surrounding us, “because after all, if velociraptors can systematically test electrified fences for weakness, so can we”.
“When we know who enters what, we can also adapt the situation accordingly”
As a part of the session ”Entangled and Enmeshed”, Tony Olsson shares with us his experience of working on UX design for access control management products. Tony (he/him) has been in the tech industry for many years, including at companies like Assa Abloy who, through their manufacturing, work literally with doors and locks.
From physical objects to their virtual counterparts, doors have existed as long as civilisation itself, marking the boundary between the public and private, between the known and unknown. They reflect the complexity of their time and hold deep cultural significance.
Tony warns of potential danger as our virtual doors become more and more invisible. The structure of metaphorical doors, such as login pages, have implications for how we think about digital spaces and places. Tony urges us to think critically about which doors we use and which we remove.
“Almost everyone has a story connected to their mobile phone. They are deeply personal and interconnected with our daily lives.”
But what if technology isn't just what we do, but how we feel? Emily and Sarah knew this truth. Their experiences with tech left deep imprints, revealing that while Silicon Valley excels at innovation, it often overlooks the origin stories. Determined to change that, they embarked on a journey to build a timeline of technology, one that didn’t just highlight its triumphs but also its scars.
Faced with a challenge—"How do we get people to share their stories?"—they turned to the art of prompt engineering. By using tech as a tool to connect and create meaning, they tapped into something powerful. The timelines resonated deeply, making people feel seen, heard, and represented.
The result? Our people’s history that’s raw, nostalgic, and deeply expansive.
It invites the questions: What is innovation if not done responsibly? Without soul, stories, and impact, is it worth celebrating?
This century will be defined by society’s capacity to respond to climate breakdown. It’s not going to be like the movies, a CGI spectacle of eschatological earthquakes and meteorites. Climate breakdown is a slow and terrifying disaster. Györgi Gálik, City Transitions Co-Lead at Dark Matter Labs, emphasises our need to have an honest understanding of the challenge we face in order to make informed decisions to address it.
To take the temperature of society, Györgi points to everyday political talk as a primary site for people’s ‘world-making.’ Current conversation on climate veers from hedonism to nihilism, technological optimism and denialism. To those who seek to sequester themselves on a farm in the Nordic archipelago, “we are way beyond planting cucumbers.”
How do we ready ourselves for resilience? Györgi advocates we update frameworks of governance to pledge greater diversity, develop versatile skill sets, and adapt our language use to encompass mutual codependency and co-security. She highlights already existing examples – cornerstone indicators that measure satisfaction with vehicle-free life and key project objectives that explicitly include poverty alleviation.
What type of citizenry do we wish to practise? We can expand our collective imagination to embody a diverse, participatory, and resilient citizenship. Györgi concludes with a guiding principle – faced with an obvious answer to a complex question, be suspicious.
Q&A from the session Entangled and Enmeshed with Andie Nordgren, Tony Olsson and Matt Jones
”We don’t have an energy problem, we have a matter problem.”
Matt Jones (he/him) is an American designer with a background at Google, where he was a Principal Designer for eight years. Most recently, he has been working with clean energy products at Lunar Energy. Since having left Lunar he is now focusing on his new venture Kardashev Street, which aims to help the solar energy sector harness more of the power already available to us.
Have you heard of Nikolai Kardashev? Matt’s introduces the Kardashev Scale, measuring a civilisation’s technological advancement based on the amount of energy it is capable of harnessing. From the planetary to the stellar, even to the galactic scale – this might sound like the stuff of Star Trek, but it’s quite simple. Matt believes that with the existing wind, water and solar power available to us (plus storage capabilities) we can reach Type 1 living on the Kardashev scale – we’re currently only at 0.7.
By working with the 3Ds of energy: decarbonisation, digitisation and decentralisation – products like the solar batteries produced by Lunar can help us get all the electricity we need, while still leaving fossil fuels behind.
The Q&A from session Learning How to Learn with Ella Fitzsimmons, James Taylor-Foster and Lore Oxford
The Q&A from the session Manufacturing Materiality with Rosa Whitely and Laura Feinstein
What does a climavore eat? More than a diet, it’s a call to address the manmade seasons created by pollution, soil exhaustion, and fertiliser runoff. How we structure our food systems in turn structures the environment, directly impacting the climate.
Rosa Whiteley is Director of Material Research at CLIMAVORE, a research platform and agency who ask the question of how to eat in the anthropocene. She describes their activities on the Isle of Skye, where the cascading effects of intensive salmon farming are felt along the coastline. They advocate divestment from salmon farming and explore alternative ingredients such as seaweeds, sea vegetables, and bivalve shellfish.
Through their rebuilding practice, CLIMAVORE investigate historical ties between food systems and architectural typologies. Rosa mentions how in 15th century Edinburgh oyster shells were used to pack a hole in the Royal Mile. This symbiotic connection has been severed by carbon intensive building practices and food production which wipe out local knowledge. Using lime, mortar, and tabby cement made from shells, CLIMAVORE create materials for building and art installations.
Moving beyond materiality, CLIMAVORE sow the seeds for societal change through community managed growing areas and meeting spaces, reinvestment of funds within Skye, and collective ownership of goods. They point the way towards new ways of living in coastal regions and beyond.
“Do we want species to exist only at the bare minimum, just above the threshold of being considered endangered, or do we want a thriving nature?”
Giulia Testa’s (she/her) talk dives deep into the concept of shifting baseline syndrome—a gradual change in accepted norms that has led us to unknowingly accept the decline of wildlife populations as "normal." She challenges us to recognize how our reference points shape our understanding of the natural world and influence our conservation ambitions.
Gulia advocates for a progressive approach to conservation: rewilding. By bringing back wildlife and restoring ecosystems to a state where they can take care of themselves, she argues that we can create a more balanced and sustainable environment. This includes acknowledging the crucial role of scavengers in keeping ecosystems clean, as well as the unique impact predators have on biotic systems—an influence we can't replicate through human management. Her talk is a powerful reminder that in order to truly conserve nature, we must learn to let go of control and allow the natural world the space to recover and flourish on its own terms.
“Through others we become ourselves, we learn, we grow and acquire knowledge”.
As society becomes increasingly digital, people become more socially awkward. But, learning through interactions with other human beings is an essential part of life. So how can we learn from each other when there are less opportunities to meet in person?
According to Lore Oxford, the answer lies in community building. Reddit provides a platform for people to come together and discuss topics of common interest. Whether it’s taking advice from other dog owners or discussing personal finance with people who have the same level of knowledge, the platform offers a safe space to share and learn.
Drawing from her experience in community management at Reddit, she offers three main strategies that brands and employers can adopt to enable social learning: normalising openness, defining boundaries, and integrating perspectives. Listen and learn!
“Sometimes one has to travel to another planet in order to understand what is going on in one’s own”.
James Taylor-Foster explores the meaning and power of design through concepts such as ASMR and LARP-ing. He introduces the audience to the concept of "world glimpsing," where we learn about our own world by experiencing the worlds of others. Using live action role-play as an example, he affirms that temporarily becoming a different character helps us, among other things, to become more empathetic toward others. Through role-play, we can adopt someone else’s perspective and view of the world, leading to improved understanding and connection.
Additionally, the concept of play offers significant opportunities to connect and communicate not only about pleasant topics but also more serious matters in life. Engaging with other realities helps us push our own limits and expand our experiential understanding of the world. This, he claims, is the power of design.
“By adding AI to software we can create something magical.”
Ella Fitzsimmons cleverly draws parallels between AI and how magic has been used, portrayed and worked in medieval courts and beyond. It is something that we are fascinated by – a great power that allows us to create something from “thin air” with minimum work. She suggests that we as a collective need to deepen our understanding of AI. This allows us to no longer see the magic, that is AI, as a threat to humanity. Similarly she compares it to the knowledgeable people who were mistreated in the past because of their special “magical” abilities.
But, how can we harness the potential of AI, and how should we manage the changes it brings to our world? Fitzsimmons underlines the need to learn from the past and reflect on where we want to be in the future. System designers need to consider the users first to be able to leverage that power to create a magical experience for them.
“We should look inwards and consider who gets to be called a designer and think of the cultural exclusion that’s happening there.”
In this insightful talk, Michael Kibedi (he/him) challenges us to rethink our impact on the earth, ourselves, and our future. He explores how a human-centered economy and isolating technology contribute to environmental harm and social disconnect. Kibedi encourages us to reflect on who is recognized as a designer and the cultural exclusions shaping these recognitions. By examining the origins of our design ideals, he calls for a broader, more inclusive view of creativity and personhood.
Looking ahead, Kibedi urges us to imagine diverse, equitable futures, questioning narrow, Western-centric technological perspectives. He emphasizes the need for reparative work and engagement with varied knowledge traditions to avoid repeating the erasure of marginalized communities.
Through his talk, Michael inspires a more inclusive and harmonious approach to design and technology. By rewilding our perspectives, we can strive towards inclusive futures that honor multiple ways of knowing and being.
”Climate change is hard to sense but we can try to rewild ourselves by reconnecting our senses to the planet.”
Data definitely feels more hard than soft and it’s not something you generally associate with nature. But in her contribution to the session ”Rewilding Us”, Seowoo Nam (she/her) shows how useful it can be for green infrastructures. Currently doing design and research for award-winning Dutch agency C°F, Seowoo employs digital simulations to find ways of sensing through data.
Because changes to the climate happen so slowly, they’re hard for the human mind to sense. Perhaps we should rather craft interfaces and tools to tell us meaningful narratives from data? Once you sense something you immediately know that it is really happening, Seowoo says, and you can determine actions to take. So, no, musicians aren’t the only ones who have created digital twins of themselves. Seowoo’s twin forests run as simulations to get a sense of what might happen in future scenarios.
Moderator Johanna Koljonen speaks to a packed Theatre stage before the closing keynote on Wednesday. She talks of the collective dreams that have been manifested through Jemma Foster's Geomantra app and helps us to land in the space of hopefulness and melancholy that is present in them before introducing Nipun Mehta and his keynote on Who Must We Be.
Beloved The Conference moderator Johanna Koljonen opens the 2024 edition with restating the question Joshua Idehen asked in his performance: How did you get here? The theme of the first day is a wake-up call – a kind of “oh shit” moment that forces us to turn to that scary corner in the room, but to light it up with rationality, with community, with poetry.
British artist Joshua Idehen (he/him) opens The Conference 2024 with a spoken word performance in which he asks the audience “how did you get here”. The electrifying performance is an homage to David Byrne’s 1980 track "Once in a Lifetime", originally performed by Talking Heads.
”We need to move from transaction to relationship.”
Nipun Mehta brings us on a transcendental journey to find our compassionate selves. Through the transforming story of his walking pilgrimage across India, Nipun kicks off by sharing his three key values: success, service and stillness. Further life snippets trigger us to ask ourselves fundamental questions such as “Where did you learn to be good?” or “Who must we be to walk towards futures we cannot imagine?”
For one thing is certain, Nipun loves life and the humans that constitute it. He generously shares with the audience the guiding statements shaping his daily life, work and service, as they are all intertwined. By taking inspiration from figures of compassion and wisdom such as Mother Teresa, Gandhi or Desmond Tutu, he insists that creating a “we-to-we” community centred around our relationship to the other rather than the value involved in the transaction process will make us all more complete humans. As he concludes, “we are not merely what we do but we become who we are by what we do”. A true lesson of community, service and humility to help us navigate the unknown of tomorrow.
Johanna Koljonen closes 2023's The Conference with a recap how we as participators have tried to move away from oppositional binaries but also reflects that how these binaries also work as an aid to understand the world. Not only that, we are also able to shift and remix the the meanings of these opposites. Remembering a recent conversation at The Conference where she got to question "what is professionalism?" she suggests that maybe we, when we allows us to be human, discovers a lot useful skills we can use in what we do. If we can celebrate our differences, our personal stories and backgrounds in our work life maybe we also find new perspectives and tools to create the change we wish to see.
Examining the creativity of generative artificial intelligence tools brings up interesting parallels with human cognition. Just as AI systems predict and fill gaps, our brains do so too, drawing from a wide range of learned behaviours, experiences and beliefs. Both entities heavily rely on their training data: AI on diverse datasets, humans on factors like personal histories, culture and upbringing.
Of course, creativity is not only a generative optimisation tool developed by our homo-sapien ancestors in order to survive. The frictions and surprises that occur in the creative process provide valuable data for better informing our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world. Nick uses the metaphor of a therapist to reframe the potentials of human-AI collaboration. Just as a therapist does, these tools can help humans to unpack, twist and turn concepts to aid better understanding and make meaningful breakthroughs. The results are often new and surprising (the essence of what creativity is all about.)
Nick ends with some hopeful predictions for creative expression and that it can lead to more creative, inspired and poetic results. Ultimately, AI can help us to better learn what it means to be human.
BITOI stands for Bass is the original instrument. BITOI are exploring the boundaries of the voice and the electric bass. The band is made up of one electric bass player and three vocalists from Denmark and Sweden (Cassius Lambert, Alexandra Shabo, Lise Kroner, Anja Tietze Lahrmann). They are working with an extended electric bass neck to allow quartertones and the lyrics of tracks are based on phonetic pronunciations of bird sounds, leading to a unique sound that transcends borders. Some tracks feel mythical while others feel very contemporary.
Q&A from the sessions Tending To Transformation – For Creative Leaders Who Stay With The Trouble with Pernilla Glaser (Author, Educator), Lydia Slaby (Community Leader and Author) and Holley M. Kholi-Murchison (Oratory Glory)
“Are you willing to dig deep and choose what your heart wants in the face of fear?”
How can we begin to view the work that we do as a journey towards self-actualisation? Holley began in their own journey of resignation from a toxic workplace, to found Oratory Glory, and has continued to work in spreading stories and helping people find meaning in their life and work. Many people find that they don’t fit into the boxes that those around them expect them to fit in, causing them to shrink themselves. Their ideas and their aspirations. Finding your own narrative can bring you back towards finding meaning in your life and in your work.
Holley delves into the importance of doing the work on yourself, in order to find self-actualisation in your other professional life. Reflecting on why work is important to you, what aspect of yourself you want to develop, and what your heart is yearning to do, will all move you towards a place of where we understand who we are. This leads us to becoming a better person in any place of work or interaction. Dare to be inconvenient, different, and work with things that make your heart sing.
“Take time to pay attention. Not everything can be solved in 15 minutes, let it take the time it takes”
“Stay in the hard and uncomfortable conversations”
Lydia Slaby learned the hard way that to live a life that is worthwhile, you need to find space for the heart and the brain. At the end of a long-list of achievements, and on a trajectory towards immense corporate success, Lydia suffered a cancer diagnosis that shifted her understanding of achievement. Moving from the corporate lawyer world, toward community based leadership, she found the beauty in letting a person be fully human, all the time.
You, or your colleagues, will go through things in your lives that forces you to change. Life is, and will be messy and humans are and will continue to be imperfect, and as leaders you need to let them be just that. You won’t always be able to receive total clarity from someone, because sometimes it just isn’t there. Instead of viewing people and workers as machines of productivity, listen, learn, and see the whole of them. This will take time, but in the end letting the emotional, intuitive instincts blend with the rational, and controlling, will create leadership that lets people be people.
“We all start out as artists”, Pernilla Glaser explains. After all, most of us know how the snow eaten from a mitten tastes. We started out as open for experimentation, doing weird things, feeling and exploring the world and the relationships around us. Pernilla invites us to find ways back into this state, and to put more attention to our heart and not just our brain. The best way of hosting a playdate between the heart and brain is by actually inviting more play into our lives and reminding ourselves that we are always part of a web of relationships.
Play can help us imagine and actualise a different world, “a world you can imagine is reality halfway there.” Sure, our current society is not particularly great in supporting us in doing weird, playful and loving things but Pernilla explains that play can create reality. “Matters of the heart can take us to the heart of the matter”, meaning that if we can let our heart support and guide us through the challenges of the polycrisis we find ourselves in, we will be better equipped to manage the many webs of messy, difficult and complex relations we are intertwined with.
Q&A from the session Creative Assemblages – Emerging Alliances to Augment Human Creativity with Kristoffer Ørum (Artist) and Kader Bagli (RISE | Visual Effects Studio)
Kristoffer Ørum finds satisfaction in taking a particular technology that is meant for something else and misusing it. In his current unfinished Instagram project that unfolds over time, the artist uses AI to create a version of history. The generated pictures combine 90s hip-hop culture, the Danish worker movement, fishermen's culture, and the health care system. But the more you look at it, the more you notice its imperfections. That is Kristoffer’s way of imagining and reimagining the past. Why? Because any discussion of the past is a discussion of the future.
We need to rediscover our own imagination. Kristoffer criticises the lack of imaginary futures and our incapability to get out of the future narratives dictated by tech giants. Also, the “horrible shitshow” that is social media, where we constantly get bombarded with fake and manipulated images, contributes to that problem. So he hopes that with projects like his that play with past, future, and (re)imagination, we can regain the power to imagine futures not defined by tech monopolies.
“We all deserve to be seen in visual languages. We already have the tool, now it’s about taking action”
Could merging VFX and AI create a fully represented world? Kader Bagli certainly thinks so. Working at the intersection of creativity, imagination and technology, she is exposed to a lack of diversity on a daily basis. Our current visual storytelling landscape doesn’t celebrate cultural diversity across all layers of society – we are good at marginalising groups instead of normalizing them. But the good news is: we already have the tools to change that; we just need to put it into action to unstuck ourselves.
With AI putting a halt to our lack of imagination and VFX offering storytellers new perspectives, the future looks hopeful. Because we all deserve to be seen — on screen and off — with dignity, humanity and no judgment. So, what are we waiting for if that’s what it takes to change our visual language to a more inclusive one?
Q&A from the session Humanity, (AI)mplified – The AI Tools We Use to Be More Human with Laura Herman (Oxford Internet Institute,)Ovetta Sampson (Google) and Charlotte Högberg (Lund University)
How can AI be used for the common good or more precisely in healthcare? Charlotte’s work explores what futures are possible and desirable but also what we are at risk of losing. AI's role in healthcare can have harmful effects but also huge potential benefits. She emphasises the need to raise vital questions and consider consequences. Awareness of nuances, understanding risks and avoiding unethical technology is key because this touches upon high stake decisions (literally about life and death).
“We need to be in the often uncomfortable spaces in between - at least for a while”
Constant critical engagement and trust calibration is needed because there are no quick fixes for these new emerging issues - for example how much can we augment until humans are only operators - and is this something we want to strive towards?
She closes her talk with a both hopeful and cautious remark. She advocates daring to dream of AI-specialist collaboration, while maintaining agency, responsible exchange and upholding medical ethics and common goals.
"Data is the love language of machine learning, but we must remember that it is not true."
We all create data. And all data is created by people. Ovetta Sampson wants us to remember this, both in order to centre humanity but also to clarify the vulnerabilities of data. We are biased, so the data we create is infused with biases as well. Whether it is by the sin of omission or the use of inequitable variables, traumatised datasets manifest in real world situations such as applying for a bank loan or decisions made on housing and education.
Ovetta urges particular caution for the encounters between humans and machines in the era of AI and machine learning. It's not Skynet, not yet, but ceding decision making responsibility to such systems can lead to harmful consequences. The best way of countering these resides in responsible, human-centred design frameworks which capture the minimum viable data, maintain balance in the exchange of what people give and what they receive, and include iterative privacy by default.
Ovetta ends with a rigorous set of responsible design practices to combat the amplification of our human biases by AI systems.
“What would you make if you did not have to generate it?”
Global platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok enable creatives to show their work to wider audiences. However, these platforms also operate using algorithms that determine which content appears in users' feeds and what remains unseen.
This dynamic has significant implications: firstly, algorithms replace the work that elite institutions such as museums and art galleries traditionally have done. We tend to explore what grabs our attention instead of spending time with art pieces that might need more time to examine and understand. Secondly, recommendation systems influence the way creatives show their work. Collaborators in Laura’s projects shared that they sometimes publish works that will perform well but not necessarily challenge them as artists or show their best work.
“How would you describe your taste to a machine?”
This has an influence on our perception of the world and on the evolving role of humans as creators. Laura believes generative AI tools can be seen as an additional tool in the creatives’ toolbox. Along with this, there is a shift of focus from production to curation.
Coming up with ideas and thoughtful concepts is becoming more crucial than the production process itself as this can be (partially or entirely) assisted by generative AI tools. Taste and critically selecting criterias will become sought-after creative skills. She closes her talk with provoking questions like how art pieces look different depending on who they were aimed to be created for.
Q&A from the session Doing Equity – Tools for Making Diversity, Equity and Inclusion more...Inclusive with Peter Bilak (Typotheque), Caroline Bollen (TU Delft) and Dr. Nighat Arif (BBC, NHS)
“What happens when you don’t have the words to describe the symptoms?”
In the last installmentof the ‘Doing Equity’ session, Dr. Nighat Arif, the resident doctor of BBC andITV presents an uplifting talk that reiterates the importance of raisingawareness and in normalizing discussions of female health within the Black and Asian communities in theUK. From menstruation to menopause as well as breast cancer – she states thatthere are still alot of stigmas and shame attached totalking about these health concerns. Which is made even more complicated withthe language boundaries as well as the unavailability of words in the different ethnic languages.
“Why is that women who look like me and sound likeme are not being listened to?”
When she gets together with women fromthese communities, such as at a mosque, she often hears stories about how doctorsassume that menopausal symptoms don’t apply to them. Specifically, the mentalsymptoms of menopause – such as brain fogs, being forgetful, etc.- are oftenignored and the women are given antidepressants instead.
So how does one address this gap of knowledge in female healththat exists not only in the Asian and black communities in the UK, but also inother cultures in the world? What stepscan one take to normalize this important discussion ininclusive ways? One of Dr.Nighat Arif’s creative answers to this is through heruse of TikTok alongside the use of memes and gifs to reach out, educate,and engage in not just English, but also Urdu and Punjabi.
“Empathy is the balance between identification and differentiation”
In this session ‘Doing Equity’, we dive into the aspects and practices that can be adopted in order to materialize equity in different settings. An interdisciplinary researcher at Delft University of Technology, Caroline Bollen whose research focus revolves around how to best understand empathy in a society where communication is more and more mediated by technologies.
Through dissecting what empathy connotes in multiple definitions, we find ourselves in her conceptualization of empathy which oscillates in a state of balancing identification and differences. She further explains that as a society, we have the tendency to reduce empathy to certain social, narrow norms, such as good or bad.
Utilizing Reddit’s ‘Am I the Asshole’ subreddit as an example of how technology can be used to facilitate collective constructive feedback, it gives the chance for users to connect, empathize, and imagine themselves in the shoes of others.
“Communication technology is like meta-empathy.”
“I wish there were governments who paid for this”
Peter Bil'ak is a well-known name within the narrow field of typography and type design. Having worked for many years digiitising handwritten scripts from South Asian regions, he shares some of the implications of digitally missing and incomplete alphabets. While the global population is growing very quickly, the number of spoken languages is simultaneously shrinking. As education and other systems become standardised, languages that aren’t even properly documented don’t stand a chance.
With examples from both India and indigenous Canadian societies, Bilak explains how linguists and designers need to leverage technology if we want to be able to save some of these languages and scripts. Because if they disappear we risk losing a lot of localised knowledge. In Canada, Syllabics include a group of 40 different languages. Several of them are incomplete on computers, meaning some people cannot even spell their names. And in India… no one even knows how many languages there are in total.
Optimisation of font software and the Unicode framework are vital for these marginalised languages. Working with the community is the only way to make things happen, says Bilak. One such result is the November Type System: a versatile and accessible collection of fonts based on the needs of readers of hundreds of languages in South Asia.
Q&A from the session Setting Stories Free – How We Tell The Tales That Move Us with Priyanka Borpujari (Award-winning journalist), Bjarke Calvin, Sophia Jörgensen, Iben Völund (Duckling), Building a legacy for 21st-century journalistsMarie Kilg (Deutsche Welle).
“Our world is connected by stories” says Bjarke Calvin. For him stories are not just a way to share information but a way of nurturing human connection. So what to do with the fact that news stories we interact with are more and more defined by social media? Tech-giants that dominate the media space, do not foster storytelling as their primary goal is generating advertisements. .
To free stories from the linear, centralised format that we are currently trapped in, we need to hack the current system.
“Before news was just something we consumed, now we got to be part of it.” explains Iben Völund, a high school student and collaborator of Bjarke. Using the Duckling App the students wrote and published their own stories.Iben and Sophia explained that reading a story created by someone their age is more interesting. They are more directly related to their own experiences. Packaging stories for the younger generations is important. As the students explain during the talk, online news articles look boring for them, “there needs to be more images, videos and probably some special effects.”
Making the stories more accessible means finding strategies better than paywalls to curate news, and learning from other ways of finalizing news stories.
The Duckling team believes that if we could wrap the stories differently, it would give agency to the younger generation. News does not need to be boring and fear-inducing, it can be hopeful.
Anic is not like any other writer. Anic is the first non-human columnist and while Anic is not a human they still have parents. “We saw ourselves comfortable in the role of parents, as we wanted to grant Anic as much independence as possible but we still had to create certain rules that had to be maintained.” Marie Kilg is one these parents and her collaborators created Anic as a sort of an investigation looking at what it would mean if an AI writes articles, in her talk she shared their learning and reflections.
Through this fictional exploration of Anic the AI-columnist, the team realized that despite what many of us may fear, AI cannot write stories. “There is a lot of human labor at every step of the process”. And while it is impressive what level of poetry and emotions an AI generated text can entail, “that is still just humans feeling the human feelings'', Marie explains. We as humans project our emotions onto an object that does not have any. Furthermore Mari underlines that AI does not have any agency that still belongs to the people who use it. And while it is easy to anthropomorphise machine learning algorithms, and attach some kind of intent to it, we humans are responsible for each step of the process in one way or another. AI is a tool and we should treat it like that.
“In every conflict the first thing to go is truth, and the first killed victim is the messenger.”
“Editors are not interested in mundane stories because we have stopped listening entirely”
Who decides which stories get to be told? Who defines what an important story actually is? Priyanka Borjupari shares stories of her experiences as a journalist in all parts of the world, and her views on how storytelling affects the way that we view what’s important and what is not.
Many aspects of our world, like countries and the people around us, are ascribed meaning whether we want them to or not. Those meanings create presumptive stories that inform us how things are, and tend to make us forget that what actually connects us is the mundane. We all have a similar aspiration to have a better life for our loved ones and ourselves, and that is what ultimately connects us. Current gatekeepers of stories, like large magazines, newspapers and editors, all decide what’s important based on their presumptions, but what about telling stories of the mundane human experiences?
The future of journalism should allow for the nuances in being human. After the pandemic, an event that connected and affected all of humanity, we have a unique opportunity to fight and uplift new types of stories, and let people and nations be many things.
Q&A from the session Memory in The Machine – The Tools We Use to Archive Us with Carl Öhman (Uppsala University) and Neef Rehman (Creative technologist, Isometric)
“The anthropomorphisation of AI is not the way to go. It is more interesting to look at how that impacts our interaction and perception of time.”
What does time look like for machines? Do machines understand time the way humans perceive it? And what happens when we rely on machines that have their own view of the world and on us? Neef Rehman discusses how the concept of time is unique to us and shaped by the people around us. But in an era of increasing interdependence, time as we know it — fluid, fallible and social — is challenged by generative, non-reliable agents that blur the past and the future.
Machine Forgetting is a phenomenon that we need to remind ourselves more of, argues Neef. Why? As we rely on our extended network of technology and learned machines to remind us of memories or events, we must accept that these agents are not as shiny as they present themselves. They are messy, biased and will forget things — just like humans. So let’s not spend time feeling gaslit by these agents but radically accept that no one has certainty over memory.
“The data of the dead is more than individual user history, it is the heritage of the 21st century.”
By the end of this century, Facebook will host 5 billion profiles of deceased people - and therefore have access to data of more people who are dead than alive. That poses an urgent question: What do we do with the digital dead?
Since the agricultural revolution and the settlement of humans, the dead have been around us. They are a portal to our past, and we continue to feel connected to them. Due to the digital revolution, the people who die now also leave a digital footprint. That leads to a question of morality: What do we do with this enormous amount of data? Who owns it, who accesses it, who deletes it? Who can profit from it economically? All of this is more than a question of individual user history but the actual heritage of the 21st century. So, how do we treat this primary source of information that we pass down to the future?
Should we really let 1-2 tech companies gatekeep the access to our collective digital past? Should we grant families access to our data after we die? And can we influence which version of us will be displayed after our death? Carl Öhman encourages us to think about these questions because even though you may not care about your data after your death because you are dead, there are various reasons why you absolutely should.
“Injustice it’s not rooted in computing. It’s been happening for hundreds of years and it’s still being imposed through centuries in violence through colonialism.”
“Before seeking new design solutions, we look for what is already working at the community level”. This is one of the 10 principles for design justice that Costanza-Chock presents in her keynote, which is essential listening for middle-class gender-normative designers. We might be blind to the burdens imparted on less privileged individuals, but if we think more about the implications our devices, interfaces and systems have on everyone, we can get far. That’s the message that Costanza-Chock has for us.
There’s no one “best” approach to design problems – “I’m not looking for the systems to be less biased”, they say. Because we’re living in an historical time where there’s a slow sea-change taking place. The Design Justice book from 2020 presents concrete examples of how marginalised peoples are disproportionately burdened by existing systems and technologies. Designers, activists and developers alike can learn from and be inspired by the Design Justice Network to engage in liberating system design. Because the root of the issue is the structural inequality that reproduces this ‘matrix of domination’, as Patricia Hill Collins defined it in Black Feminist Thought. There are huge interlocking systems of oppression (from capitalism to white supremacy) and design justice is a concrete framework for beginning to tackle these age-old issues.
BITOI stands for Bass is the original instrument. BITOI are exploring the boundaries of the voice and the electric bass. The band is made up of one electric bass player and three vocalists from Denmark and Sweden (Cassius Lambert, Alexandra Shabo, Lise Kroner, Anja Tietze Lahrmann). They are working with an extended electric bass neck to allow quartertones and the lyrics of tracks are based on phonetic pronunciations of bird sounds, leading to a unique sound that transcends borders. Some tracks feel mythical while others feel very contemporary.
Returning moderator extraordinaire, Johanna Koljonen, opens The Conference 2023 and extends a warm welcome to the participants. She begins with a reflection on the personal financial situation that many of us have faced due to last year's economic turmoil. She states, "Working in this economy, we're facing a lot of pressure that we previously have not experienced," and connects environmental threats, financial anxiety, and the unease of social securities, all leading us to a state of prolonged worry.
However, Johanna acknowledges that even as a "constant worrier," there comes a point when there isn't enough time to worry. She continues, emphasizing that even if we reach a state of "compassion fatigue," we must never let it turn into "solidarity fatigue." We can just hope that these anxieties and fears remain unexploited by dark interests as she reminds us that even though we may need to put on our oxygen masks first in case of an emergency, we still have the power to act and help others. It is in times like these we need the practical work of change, which, in turn, is the practical work of hope. Perhaps you'll find something of it at The Conference.
Q&A from the session Enacting Care – Putting Sustainability Into Practice with Deb Chachra (Olin College), Becky Lyon (Artist) and Ledama Masidza (Oceans Alive)
In what kind of future would you like to live? Blade Runner or Black Panther?For too long, our futures have been determined by immature science fiction imaginaries still stuck in the mid to late 20th century. Their utopian and dystopian binaries now provide fertile inspiration for police-state-aesthetic VC pitch decks and a cluster of ideologies known as TESCREAL: Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism. Moreover, many of these past narratives have not recognised the richness and diversity of knowledge, experiences and worldviews. "Those who control the fantasy, control the future."Monika Bielskyte identifies the cost of such grand visions, whose utopianism has historically had its roots in exclusionary and eugenic principles. For a more positive and productive way of seeing the future, Monika’s vision of Protopia is radically hopeful and inclusive. Protopia is grounded in plurality, interdependence, embodiment, biosphere regeneration, creative flourishment, spiritual fulfillment, and evolved values. By including the voices of those that have been purposefully previously erased, Protopia changes the nature of leadership and creates the possibility for interesting things to happen. Monika ends on a hopeful note: “Different worlds have existed, and they could exist again”
“We can only manage what we know.”
Ubuntu is a concept that embraces the interconnectedness between all living things. No one is independent of the fact that our existence is directly dependent on the care between human and nonhuman communities. Ledama shared a story of hope, the case of Kuruwitu, a fishing community in Kenya that managed to heal itself from impacts of overfishing, coral bleaching and climate change. They did this through collaborative care, and harnessing the collective intelligence of their community.
Ledama mentioned some key success factors that led to Kuruwitu healing the devastation of marine life they had experienced, one of which was knowing the community. Understanding who lives there, allowing everyone to contribute, and harnessing the knowledge of their shared environment. Opening a dialogue with marine ecology through ocean data as well as having a sensitive understanding of the incentive models of the human community in Kuruwitu created caring approaches for both. Holistic solutions require collective intelligence, which in turn requires multiple experiences to be heard.
“Energy is general purpose freedom.”
“The earth is in a void, every atom has to come from some place, and go somewhere.“
Infrastructure might not be the first thing we think of when we hear the word “care”, but these systems are manifestations of how we ensure quality of life as a society. Debbie Chachra refers to a quote of Amartya Sen - “We want wealth not because it's desirable on its own, but because it gives freedom to actually do what gives life value.” In her talk Debbie pointed out that the wealth of a country can be measured by the amount of money put into infrastructure. In fact a satellite image of the earth in some ways reflects wealth simply by showing the amount of artificial light present. Debbie Chachra sees artificial light as pure agency as it allows us to do things we would otherwise not be able to do.
If we take it a step further, energy is a general purpose freedom as having access to it allows you to exist with ease in your day to day. The issue is that the main source for energy we have harnessed are fossil fuels bringing us in the state of climate crisis we find ourselves in today. The speaker invited us to take a look at our lovely planet as a place that gets an immense amount of energy from the sun every day and also a place that exists in a void. Meaning every atom has to come from some place, and go somewhere. Debbie Chachra asks us to rethink the idea of energy that is limited, and the ideas of material resources that are not. To create caring infrastructure futures we need to commit to decentralized infrastructure for regenerative energy and build careful relationships to material flows.
“The master's house cannot be rebuilt with master's tools.“
“A physical shift with our bodies can shift how we think about a problem.”
In her talk, Becky Lyon reminded us that we need to get back to our bodies, in order to create a world where we can thrive. In the dominant European American system the body has been estranged in favor of the rational, the evidence-based and the narrow. It caused us to step outside of ourselves, placing the notion within us that nature is outside of ourselves. What Becky encourages us to do, is to return to the body. If we reintroduce the body to make the change that we want to see, it can return our intuition closer to our core selves. Perhaps this can alter the gated and guarded power structures that currently exist.
As a part of the toolkit for care that Becky presents, she encourages you to map the “enmessments”, meaning to map all the interconnections, flows and entanglements surrounding you. Understanding the complexity allows for more care-full decisions. The audience was at one point invited to act out an act of care, opening space for lightness, humor and laughter. Embracing joy and play brings us back to our bodies, and helps us enact care into our daily lives. Lastly, as Becky said, practice here is key, so go out and do it.
When everyone else calls for economic growth, innovation, and addition, Timothée Parrique demands demolition, sabotage, and removal. Our strive towards infinite growth is not sustainable on a finite planet. So far, no economy in the world has managed to grow its economy without overshooting the planetary boundaries. That’s why we need an economic strategy based on subtractions, not additions. And we need to rethink the economy's purpose, as growth tells us nothing about prosperity and well-being. So, is de-growth the solution?
Timothée advocates for a planned, selective, and temporary downscaling of production and consumption. Mainly because the alternative, growth-obsessed capitalism, is a total collapse. And if you want to lose weight, you would want to diet gradually over time rather than chop off a leg, right? Let's come in like a wrecking ball and discuss how an economy can prosper without growth — because that is the ultimate innovation.
Have you ever met a self-employed autonomous robot artist? Introducing Gaka-chu ("painter" in Japanese), a 6-axis robot arm that creates artistic paintings of Japanese characters. While robots have historically been treated as labour, Gaka-chu explores the concept of claiming agency and economic autonomy using blockchain-based smart contracts.
So, can robots actually maintain themselves? And if so, what implications do these economically autonomous robots have? Eduardo argues that instead of treating robots like tools, they have the potential to become peers. At the same time, robots, like Gaka-chu, now have access to economic resources without being part of traditional business entities. Would you acquire a piece from Gaka-chu and hang it on your wall?
With severe catastrophes happening around us constantly - ecologically, economically, as well as socially - we tend to feel hopeless. But hopelessness is for the privileged. Our fear makes us hold on to things we already know instead of pursuing new things. We feel lost and want to think that crisis happens elsewhere - climate change does not affect me or my loved ones. But it actually does: When climate injustice happens somewhere, it happens everywhere. And as human beings, we have to act on it.
For Jenny Grettve, the answer is kindness. Addressing problems caused by selfishness, like the climate crisis, calls for a philosophical and psychological approach. As human beings we need to be genuinely caring, always and everywhere, to create a supply chain of kindness. And we need to pursue a more feminist, matriarchy-based way of thinking in the economy. But how can we implement more kindness in our daily lives? And how can we pursue a more circular economy that is not based on hierarchies, domination, power, and wealth, but perceives everyone to be equally important? Let’s create the butterfly effect of kindness!
Cassie Robinson
Associate Director of Emerging Future at Joseph Rowntree Foundation
“There’s always something growing and declining at the same time. I am ending and beginning at the same time.”
From external events such as the pandemic to the hyper speed development of AI and tech to the increasingly urgent climate crisis discourses, how do we navigate ourselves in the midst of all these life-changing events? Are all changes – particularly the ones that liken to the ending of a cycle – inevitably bad? How can we adapt accordingly and create pathways to what’s to come?
Using an array of frameworks, Associate Director of Emerging Futures and founder of Stewarding Loss, Cassie Robinson is of the belief that endings can be done better.
“The systemic transition is considering it as making good compost – composting improves soil, it provides nutrients, it stimulates the ecosystem, it builds up.”
Robinson’s frameworks aimed at the UK public sector and organisations like the NHS. But during the Q&A aspects relating to private companies also surface..The idea of hospicing endings might seem alien or unnecessary in profit-driven systems. But these rituals are natural part of our culture - from the personal to the organizational to the societal – and here Robinson expands on the work of e.g. Vanessa Reid.
“People don’t change behaviour just because you tell them too. People need innovation in a public space to change”
“Space and life goes together, and it's important to work with them together.”
“Wise cities are making the invisible visible” and the ways we can make it visible means listening and looking at a variety of different data sources. Liselott Stenfeldt is the head of research and development at Gehl, a company which has been playing a leading role in understanding and supporting public places as a platform for community, life and culture to thrive. The main theme in Gehl's approach is to pay attention to complex stories places in the city have to tell us.
Liselott pointed out that it is important to have a diversity of data sources and kinds of data we employ to understand how hot makes our cities more filled with life. It is important to look at traffic data we can get from satellites or sensors but it is also crucial to work with more emotional and subjective data of the people living in a place. Gehl has been developing different methods to incorporate both of these datasets in their work. In this talk Liselott Stenfeldt shows 3 use cases on how the invisible can be made visible by asking people to make pictures of urban spaces and describe their sense of belonging to them or to record the sound of daily life and the emotions connected. This type of data is not really easy to work with, but by combining it with other information it shows a bigger picture. It is even more significant if there is an opportunity to give a voice to people who usually are left out of how public spaces are designed. This provides a unique opportunity in making sure people can meet and spaces are filled with life.
“Work with people who disagree with you and with each other and still work together. This is where participation can begin.“
“Reflection to time and place is important to make people participate.”
How do we get people to participate in creating the cities that they want? And once we do, how do we get them to act towards a common goal? These are some of the questions that Ling Tan works with on a daily basis and addressed in her talk.
In order to create collective action, meaning getting people working towards one common goal, it’s crucial that you are sensitive to what participants will actually get from providing their time. Will their community gain any benefits? If so, which ones? Another key aspect is having participants feel agency and ownership over the issue that they are trying to overcome, and then being a part of the solution. They want to be able to see and understand what results their efforts are yielding, and for that to happen they need to understand the problem. Ling pointed out that there needs to be more sensitivity to what kind of communities we are including and how. For example the climate movement in the UK is not really focusing on addressing different cultures present in the country. In the talk we see an example how the climate conversation can be shifted to by showing the example of the project Low Carbon Chinatown.
To succeed in understanding how people in cities can contribute to creating the future Wise Cities, you need to embrace messiness. Go outside of your comfort zone, and meet people that are different from you, agree to disagree, and work with them anyway. This will broaden your understanding of not only the people who inhabit the city, but the issues that they are interested in solving.
“The goal is to share knowledge through open-sourced tools, and for people to use them as much as possible”
In his presentation, Arnaud Grignard shared some of the work he does with his team at the City Science group at the MIT Lab, specifically a tool called City Scope. The common thread for all examples was how this tool made it possible to use data visualisation to analyse patterns and potential outcomes when developing cities. By building physical representations of cities, and projecting data onto the city, it’s possible to visualise behaviours on a large scale, such as movements of people and vehicles, and alter them to analyse the effects. One of the shown examples was a project analysing the effects of air-quality on depending on the way people in a city commute, giving a clear visual and physical representation on what it entails to take the car, public transport or bikes.
City planning can be quite abstract and complex and open-source tools like City Scope can help make the abstract more concrete. It can contribute to the democratisation of these types of analytics, and can be used as a way to communicate otherwise often overwhelming and complicated data to new types of shareholders.
But the most important thing that was pointed out, was that since this type of modelling is an open-source tool it’s available for everyone, at any time. These types of tools are available to us, so we should be using them as much as we possibly could in the planning of our cities.
Q&A from the session Imagining Institutions – (Re)making the Pillars of a Liquid Society with Dan Lockton (TU Eindhoven) and Anne Kaun (Södertörn University)
How can we think about institutions differently? In a world of competing fictions, imaginaries are one our most potent resources. Dan Lockton wants to get imaginaries out of people's heads and into a shared space - to do things differently as a result. He has a few ideas about how to do so.Metaphors are central to our imagination. They have the power to harm, to limit, but also to create. So, in the quest to reimagine institutions, Dan proposes the creation of new metaphors, and has created a toolkit to assist doing so. The prompts aren't guaranteed to provide the perfect answer, but the friction of unexpected combinations prompts us to think, reflect, and create new mental models for many of the issues we encounter in the world today. How could tree bark be a metaphor for our institutions? Or a lamppost, covered in fading A4 pages, their staples rusted from the rain? Other tools available to us include practices of visualisation, modelling, and creative foresight.In the reimagining of institutions, Dan emphasises the importance of paying attention to whose voice is heard and whose is not, broadening the input, and ensuring that a wider conversation is had about what role our institutions play in our evolving world.
Reimagining public infrastructures and systems has the potential to enhance accessibility and usefulness for diverse groups within society. Instead of taking a starting point in creating digital tools (which is often the case), Anne Kaun suggests looking into the frictions that emerge in the use of digital platforms and infrastructures.
Anne stages a scene, drawn from her real-life research to exemplify marginal stories of problems with navigating digital platforms and services. Imagine a woman who struggles to submit additional information in a digital welfare service application. At the institution's service centre, she is instructed by the staff to click through the platform and follow the steps. Digital self-help, as they say.
“Even with digital tools, life will never be a smooth ride”
Stories and scenes like this, can show us discrepancies and imbalances of power, practices and opportunities. They are examples of situations when people are left out. Digital infrastructures have different functionalities and consequences for different people. The great intention of providing fully frictionless and smooth digital welfare services for everybody is simply not realistic as there will always be groups that will face inconveniences or limitations in using them. Instead of striving for a perfect solution that fits all, Anne suggests leveraging these frictions to collectively imagine a system that provides for diverse needs and capabilities.
What if the cracks in our social and civic institutions are not signs of collapse but the first signs of transformation? Let’s face it: We’ve been living in an overly masculine society focused on dominion, growth, labour as a source of dignity, achievement as our basis of meaning and productivity as our key to purpose. But it’s a tale as old as humankind — and one we’ve put on to ourselves as a survival mechanism. Now, it’s on us to stop being at odds with nature. It’s a role that no longer serves us as it keeps snapping back at us like a rubber band with anxiety and loneliness.
Michael Slaby explores Ursula K. Le Guin's path of Utopiyin and Utopiyang as a way out. A new balance requires us to choose more feminine wisdom and leadership for now. Better yet, if we forgive ourselves for our estrangement and move ourselves back into nature’s systems, we can embrace the world through a lens of openness and connectedness. And that’s what being human is all about — isn’t it?
With the nuclear bombs detonating in 1945, Pandora’s box was unlocked. For Audrey Tang, Minister of Digital Affairs in Taiwan, Artificial Intelligence represents another box of Pandora that challenges us to think about how we can avoid the pitfalls for society and achieve collective global action. We as a society have a choice: Are we going to tumble into the abyss of abuse, manipulation, threat, cyber attacks, and deep fake, or are we going to embrace shared values, democracy, and global AI cooperation?
Global AI governance, as pursued and advocated for by Audrey Tang and Taiwan, builds on consensus and public participation in policy-making, recognizing the role of AI for good purposes. Alignment Assemblies, a pilot project of the Collective Intelligence Project, aims to sync technologies with societal values and wants to reduce the fear of AI through a participant-guided conversation about needs, preferences, hopes, and fears. In this aspect, open source and Alignment Assemblies are powerful catalysts for bolstering societal understanding. This is why Audrey Tang calls for all hands on deck to solve the Gordian Knot that is AI in order to free the future of it.
Q&A from the session Entangled Economies - Creating Value with Generosity and Interdependence with Jenny Grettve (Anon, When!When!), Timothee Parrique (Lund University), Eduardo Castello Ferrer (MIT).
Q&A from the session Wise Cities – Architecting Vibrant Connectivity with Liselott Stenfeldt (Gehl), Ling Tan (Kakilang,Umbrellium), Arnaud Grignard (Université de Lyon / MIT Media Lab).
Artist and composer Ann Rosén performs a short concert.
Ann Rosén (born 1956) is the composer, musician and artist who began her career in the visual arts in the 1980s with interactive, intelligent, and intriguing works. Since the 1990s, the artistic focus has been on music and sound art and Rosén has more than one hundred works behind her. The works have been performed at the Swedish Royal Opera, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and South Bank in London, among others
Rosén’s art revolves around the exploration of interpersonal communication, how we can understand ourselves in relation to the outside world and the barriers that can arise between us and others.
“Why not create a dish from the smell of old book?”“The most beautiful idea is to be able to eat a song.”
Senses can evoke memories. Jordi Roca explores the connection and interaction between senses, childhood memories, smell and taste. Inspired by Marcel Proust and his ‘In Search of Lost Time’, Jordi shares about his work evoking memories through smell, taste and texture: how he created desserts inspired by perfumes by deconstructing each perfume to create an aroma leading to him making his own perfume. He moved further and extracted the smell of an old book evoking a memory of reading old literature. Could you also eat a forest after a rain? Or taste different colours, each of which would have a specific melody attached to it? Might we evoke a sense of smell of people who had lost it by combining an experience of different senses, like seeing, hearing and others?
“Fiction is an extraordinary shared language.”
Fiction is a product of culture but it also produces culture: it impacts how we see the world. The line between fiction and reality is a thin one, and the urban space is one where our imaginaries are often played out. Through his piece ‘The Planet City’, Liam Young takes us on a cinematic drift through imaginary worlds: one fictional, one we are currently living in. What if we stepped back, made room and let global wilderness return? How do these fictional worlds we construct portray our technological possibilities and our gravest concerns?
As already inhabitants of a planet city, we have remade the world. A new kind of story is needed to guide us into the future. We need to visualise our collective futures. We need to shape where we all want to go next. By telling the fictive story we get the chance to imagine a possible future, and by doing so, giving us the opportunity to imagine a new story for the planet: “As we write stories we also write the world.”
“Search is not a query. It’s always a conversation. You’re not building a search engine - you’re building a tool for users to embark on a knowledge quest.”
Matt Webb explores how different types of common search mechanisms online work and the type of results they return. He goes through a history of more analogue search systems to give context to the search algorithms we all use today. Matt frames search as not being a query but rather a conversation where people are using the search tool to embark on a knowledge quest. In doing so, he reveals the limitations of popular search tools and the silos they keep us in.
He has explored different ways of making search and aggregation tools work for himself in slightly different ways. By creating his own systems, he is able to come across new information before it gets to the point of trending or being recommended by an algorithm. Matt closes by sharing some ideas for how we could each build our own systems to find the information we’re truly seeking.
“How will we garden the future of our abilities to speak with computers?”
Hillary Juma spoke about how each of us has a different experience interacting with voice recognition systems. The challenges we face in our interactions with voice recognition software differ significantly, for example some accents aren’t understood by systems as well as others because they were not included in training data sets.
Being diagnosed with dyslexia prompted Hillary to interact more with the voice-to-text systems and explore various voice recognition systems. In doing so, she realized their shortcomings and has become a “cyber doula with a specialism in linguistics” to acquaint people with these systems and their complexities.
“My entire life my sense of self has been mediated by a computer screen.”
Growing up, Maya Man has always been fascinated with the presentation of self and the meaning of true authenticity in different contexts. Her sense of self has always been mediated by a computer screen, leading her to experiment with the possibilities this presented but also feel that everything she was doing was some form of performance for a third person audience. In her recent work, she has subverted the tone of voice of Seventeen magazine covers and motivational Instagram posts to explore notions of performance, identity, and our presentation of self in the 21st century.
Q&A for the session How to use a computer featuring Matt Webb, Hilary Juma and Maya Man
“Occupations paying less than 20 dollars per hour are most at risk to be replaced by technology.”
How do you heighten your chances of making money for rent in the future? Carl Benedikt Frey suggests creativity, social intelligence and the abilities to perceive and manipulate will be central skills. These particular skills are still proving hard to automate through Artificial Intelligence. So how do we build and strengthen these skills? Does our education system and social environments support these learning processes? Who does not have access to this type of learning? Will we even need money for rent in the future? What can we build with our creativity, if we do not need to work to pay for a place to live?
“Covid-19 has done more for the digitalisation of organisations than the COO and CEO.”
During their online meeting, Calle Rosengren’s colleague from Lund University received four missed calls from her son. There must have been a fire in his room. She knocked on his door. Nah, no fire. He wanted to know whether he could eat the last semla. How do we find healthy digital boundaries and a chance to focus in these new hybrid working days?
Rosengren’s research suggests that it’s worth looking into some digital boundary management strategies. Suggested strategies circle around for example building good habits very consciously. But also - and particularly in this seriously urgent semla situation - involving any family members in conversations around digital boundaries.
“People wish to work less, but also to have more control over their time.”
How do we free humanity up to choose meaningful work? Is value actually connected to working many hours? Who defines what is ‘productive’? Who defines what is valuable? Valuable for who? Do we produce more value on our days off? What do we do to each other, when some people have control over other people’s chance to choose the most meaningful way to spend moments, hours and lives?
Rita Fontinha suggests a progressive implementation of freed up valuable time through a 4 day work week as a potential first step.
Q&A with Calle Rosengren (Lund University), Carl Benedikt Frey (Oxford University) and Rita Fontinha (Henley Business School, University of Reading) during The Conference 2022.
“Design is an agent of change which can help us make sense of what is happening and turn it to our advantage. Design has done this long before word has been invented to describe it.”
How can we approach an everyday challenge as a design project? How can people use design for activism? What is the potential of design as a tool for societal change? How can people working as professional designers work with all of us as co-designers of the future?
In her optimistic keynote session, Alice Rawsthorn describes multiple examples from her books “Design Emergency” and “Design as an Attitude'' that illustrate design as a way to respond to unforeseen circumstances and illustrate human tragedy. If design is being used responsively, empathically and intelligently, it can be a catalyst for positive change, reconstruct our lives and spark hope.
One of her most recent examples is a group of graphic designers that are hacking road signs in the Ukraine to disrupt transportation - and world community awareness - of war. They repurposed highway signs to mislead Russian soldiers by showing the only destination as “the Hague” - the seat of the International Court of Crimes against humanity.
“There are challenges when you’re trying to work in a multisensory medium in that the tools and the frameworks for this don’t really exist so we’ve had to create a lot of them ourselves along the way.”
Grace Boyle explains the vast myriad of senses that humans possess beyond the ‘big five senses’. She speaks about the concept of embodied cognition, whereby the human body and not only the brain is involved in our perceptions and thought processes. She goes on to explore digital realities created using spatial computing. Currently, these largely focus on visual and, to a lesser extent, auditory forms of communication. As a result, we are omitting lines of communication that are critical for things like learning, remembering, and forming value judgments based on how we feel. The Feelies' studio aims to produce narratives that engage the viewer's senses on a deeper level. Grace shares her explorations into creating more multisensory experiences and the range of benefits these experiences bring.
“There seems to be a great inspiration that's being taken by AR artists today from the world of surrealism and its symbolism and aesthetic language.”
Alongside her work at Meta’s Spark AR Studio, Lucia Tahan has pursued a range of AR experiments. These include using AR to distort the world around us in interesting ways and exploring how AR may shape our future. She discusses the language of AR, “haunted realism”, and the interplay between AR filters and what is being created in real life. The talk concludes with examples of what a future including more AR integration could look like and an exploration of the possibilities of the reality-virtuality continuum.
“At some point we might not refer to augmented reality anymore but instead just refer to reality.”
Bas van de Poel dives into the different definitions of the metaverse that exist today and why he believes the next big paradigm will be spatial computing, where the environment becomes the interface. He details the transition of AR from being used a lot for entertainment to becoming more utilitarian in its application. Bas shows examples of projects at the forefront of AR development, including a range of interesting projects he’s worked on recently. He closes by speculating on the concept of “reality channels” - people having different views of the same physical location using AR - and how future AR developments may influence changes in digital zoning laws.
Q&A for the session Spatial Computing featuring Grace Boyle, Lucia Tahan and Bas van de Poel.
“The tools we have change us fundamentally. They change our feelings and our cultures.”
Have you wondered why video conferencing still sucks? Because we are not just visual and auditory beings. The movements of our body are linked to our emotional processes. The tools we use impact our muscles, nervous systems, feelings, experiences and even our culture. Kristina Höök works at the Royal Institute of Technology where she studies Soma design, aesthetic and ethical wellness. Soma focuses on the fact that mind and body are not separate – how engaging with your senses will make you more present and will give you a richer life. She has been test designing products to develop this skill.
As designers, you leave a set of sedimented movements in design. You ask users to move, think and feel in certain ways. Somaesthetics is an approach to design that sees the mind and body as one. It is about designing with oneself, using one’s own soma in designing. It’s about being present in the world giving us a possibility to have richer experiences of the world we are living in. How might a lamp, a mat or even a corset help us change our way of being in the world?
“Spaces change people's behaviour.”
Urban Misery or Urban Joy - a matter of place
The context we find ourselves in influences us as human beings. It influences our choices. It influences how we feel. We are humans that are sensitive beings and social animals. Meeting other people is the essence of the city. How can the environment help us get out and meet other people rather than hinder us? And how is urban joy a matter of the everyday place?
Ewa Westermark explores what it is like to be in a city today, discussing the difference between urban misery and urban joy. What she found is that “Spaces change people's behaviours.” Trying out temporarily removing cars and traffic from the city streets she is showing us how we can bring back life to our cities. Ewa shares examples of changing the urban space and ultimately culture to foster social connection and wellbeing and demonstrates how rebuilding the city centre of Christchurch after the 2014 earthquake could be done by tapping into people’s memories and dreams to make the place better than it was.
“By the age of 25 there’s no atom in your body that you were born with. It’s all food. So some of us are just pot noodles.”
Carolyn Steel is of the belief that we live in a world shaped by food and everything ultimately comes back to food. She takes us on a journey back through time, looking at how humans used to interact with food in the days of hunting and gathering all the way through to our relationship with food today. Looking at industrialisation and its promises to solve the problem of how to live, Carolyn questions whether our ideas of progress when it comes to food can truly be seen as progress. She encourages us to see food as a starting point for imagining a good life.
How could we change our collective approaches to food to value it and see it as something that brings us pleasure rather than an inconvenience and something that needs a quick fix in the age of busyness? Carolyn looks at what we could learn from the times of the hunter gatherer lifestyle and how we could better align ourselves with the natural cycles of the planet to create better lives for everyone.
“It can be dangerous to assume that more data just equals more reality.”
"Can AI open up new possibilities for thinking about intelligence and automation?" Could machine learning help us deal with vast amounts of data beyond human comprehension? Can these techniques produce a more robust representation of reality free of human judgement? Assistant professor at NYU, Artist and Environmental Engineer Tega Brain posed these crucial inquiries during The Conference 2022.
Tega explored critical questions about the new approaches to environmental management that incorporate artificial intelligence. She stresses the dilemma of data-driven methods and planetary computing in addressing the climate crisis, exploring a range of case studies where data-driven methods have fallen short of their grand promises. Tega Brain shares some of her own projects to visualise these shortcomings in AI systems and reimagines alternatives for better understanding our changing climate.
“Connection means synergy. It’s never too late. Quantum social change is possible.”
Victor Galaz explains the planetary boundaries model, and how exceeding these boundaries will affect us. He is emphasising how the effect of the changing climate will bring rising inequalities. Today for some of the world population the future is already here and they are living in the consequences of global warming, with 1,5 degrees of warming. In his talk Victor is stressing the fact that we are in great urgency, and all possible changes are important, we need to make everything we can to make a difference. Every tenth of a degree that is obstructed will save lives.
The nine planetary boundaries is a framework created by the Stockholm Resilience Centre to establish the area in which humanity can continue to thrive and develop while still maintaining a stable and resilient Earth system. Crossing these boundaries could mean irreversible environmental changes, for example waking the “sleeping giants”; being the CO2-emissions from shovelling the trees of the Amazon. We are already overshooting these boundaries, however, that overshoot is not equally distributed. Climate inequality in Sweden for example involves housing, access to green areas and health care, and working conditions.
“When we all act, we are reinforcing each other to act.”
“This planet is our only home - not the moon, not Mars.”
It is more important than ever to guide the policymakers on how to reduce emissions. To avoid the worst, we have to halve our emissions by 2030 and reach net-zero in 2050. We need to understand our own footprint, and share where we struggle. By having a common goal we are brought together - it’s about making the switch to renewable energy, making transportation systems zero-emission, and about closing the loop on materials and products as well as food.
Karol Gobczyński is the Head of Climate and Energy at Ingka Group, responsible for developing climate and energy strategy. He shows us how Ikea is driving change throughout the organisation, to reach net zero emissions. Making the switch towards renewables and closing the loops for the products with a circular business model.
“Be the best FOR the world, not IN the world.”
What can system change look like from a business perspective; the goal of transforming to a regenerative economic system? Start measuring what matters.
The Executive Director of B Lab Tessa van Soest is explaining what B-corp certification is about, how it all started, while sharing examples of B-corp certified companies. The vision is to build a more inclusive, equitable and regenerative economic system for all people and the planet.
Certified B Corporation is a certification for businesses that help them start improving themselves on economic and social and environmental systems, working towards equity. It is a tool that measures your impact as a company and offers insight into your business model. B Corp is working to change behaviours of businesses, norms and cultural expectations about the role of businesses, and to change laws, policies and legal structures that govern businesses’ role in the economy.
“Oceans - I am sorry to say this - are covered from top to bottom in slime.”
Life Is Slimey. What is slime? You wonder about that often, don’t you? Susanne Wedlich, the author of the book “Slime - A Natural History” does, too. If you ever write a book that several booksellers refuse to put on the shelves in sheer disgust, you will know that you’re onto something.
Inspired by love stories of snails, Susanne became an expert on slime. Have you realised how much slime is all around us? With the statement “all life is slimey”, Susanne sums up the versatile nature of slime. Sometimes it functions as glue, lubricant, filter or for defence purposes. Sometimes it is part of larger networks like wetlands. There is no exact definition of slime but it is rather a quality of material. Think of stiff water - slime accumulates a lot of water that is bound in a multidimensional network. It has the very cool ability to keep danger away, while remaining open. Have you ever wondered about how to establish healthy boundaries for yourself, while being open for connection with other beings? Slime can do that.
It is smart and has memory - this was exemplified by an experiment in Tokyo where researchers put slime on a city map and placed oatmeal on the outside edges. Slime then figured out the most effective way to reach the oatmeal. Fascinatingly, the slime trails resembled the actual transportation network map of Tokyo. She concluded her talk with the urge to find and preserve the right balance of slime in our lives: too much and too little is equally bad.
"The future is synthetic."
How do you feel about synthetics? Are you thinking about a wildly sticky, static electric, polyester shirt right now? Many of us have negative connotations of synthetics as something unnatural, artificial and based on ancient fossil fueled techniques. The history of science up until now has placed nature by definition as separate and below humans, thereby creating a division between nature and technology.
Christina Agapakis from Gingko Bioworks introduces in her talk the “meatverse”, her vivid vision for society, where we (re)unite technology and nature. She asks big questions like how might we create a new kind of culture around biological development with nature? How might we design biological tools regenerative for all beings without the use of fossil fuels? How might biological programmers log into the ‘wood wide web’ to help co-create new forests?
She closes her talk with a call to celebrate nature and technology and to reflect how we might use nature without filling the world with garbage.
Q&A for the session (Natural) Intelligence featuring Susanne Wedlich and Christina Agapakis.
“Uncertainty is scary but also incredibly amazing.”
Nowadays, we can often feel like everyone is innovating only for the sake of innovation. In this talk, Darja Isaksson looks beyond the buzzword and explores how we might navigate uncertainty and complexity to create sustainable organisations.
Sweden has for a long time been a prime example of an innovative country. The old paradigm that this innovation model is built upon leans on three pillars: culture (characterised by boldness, openness, trust and a willingness to pay it forward), infrastructure (bases on reforms, policies, investments in infrastructures like available internet and making research in R&D a priority) and opportunity (creating possibilities, lower thresholds to take risks to try out new things and connecting innovators). But will this paradigm also work out in the future? How can Sweden - or any other country or organisation - foster a mindset and capability to adapt to ever-changing conditions and circumstances?
Darja reminds us that we are capable of rapid, radical, large-scale change as a global community. During the pandemic, Sweden as a community proved the capacity to be humble enough to acknowledge that we do not have all the answers. This allowed for conversations around radical, necessary societal change. Will you join the impact innovation mission that makes the most sense to you? The speaker encourages us to focus on societal outcomes that we really want while bringing together politicians, citizens and companies that are impacted by this transformation and then unpack the challenges and co-create new solutions.
“Confusing risk and uncertainty can be very expensive and unpleasant.”
“Organisations shaped by a risk mindset are naturally resistant to change.”
Organisations that want to remain innovative now and in the future need an uncertainty mindset according to Vaughn Tan. Most organisations are built on the conventional model of risk-taking that has clearly defined job roles, goals and milestones. Unfortunately, this model also makes it hard for organisations to learn, change and adapt which is ultimately necessary in our world characterised by uncertainty.
Risk and uncertainty differ in several ways. Risk takes a more mathematical approach being calculable while uncertainty has a lot of possible actions and outcomes. Some of them might be more desirable than others. Vaughn Tan suggests that organisations might benefit from learning to switch from a risk-assessment-focused mindset to an uncertainty mindset. We’re talking about holding roles open for people involved in solving a problem, setting goals with no defined end, and (re)learning the ability to learn.
Now, working with an uncertainty mindset, how might organisations more holistically understand what effects innovations can have? How might we create truly regenerative innovations?
Q&A with Vaughn Tan (University Colledge London's School of Management) and Darja Isaksson (Vinnova).
“Is 65% spoon-ness a spoon?”
“Something truly smart might rather do something unexpected.”
Simone Rebaudengo is exploring the way we are living and interacting with networked and autonomous things. In this talk he is showing us some of those experiments and explorations, challenging the mainstream perception of AI. He is humourising and democratising the understanding of, and relations to artificial (or other) intelligences.
oio.studio, or “The other intelligences operation” explore different kinds of intelligences. What is AI? Is it talking cylinders? What else? Is it possible to co-design a product together with an AI from scratch? Is there maybe something to learn in trying to create an object in the hardest way possible? By putting together AI and craftsmen with artisanal intelligence and exploring a continuous back and forth between human and machine, you start to get interesting results - things that no human would have designed themselves. How do we live with other intelligences? What if there is an actual ecosystem of intelligences, of connectivities. Can an object have an intelligence, a history, a future? Instead of focusing on the artificial, autonomous and anthropomorphic, we could rather look at artisanal, augmenting, adapting, acceptable (and many other) intelligences.
“Sticky websites are traps designed to capture people.”
Artisanal traps have two faces: where hunter and prey, two entities, meet. Computers are a kind of human trap. Can we see the image of the hunter and the prey in these computer-traps in the same way as the anthropologic traps? The interface is in fact the meeting point in between worlds.
Engagement is in the very structure of how our technical products work. This means that reimagining the relations between designers, coders, and users is the way to “get out of the trap”.
Nick Seaver is an anthropologist of technology who studies how people use technology to make sense of cultural things. In this talk he explores how we throughout history have created traps. We used to do it to capture animals, today we are capturing human minds through digital screens, a phenomenon called “addiction by design” and “sticky websites”.
“Lager networks might have a slight conscious.”
Maya Indira Ganesh is a cultural scientist who explores the poetics and policies of AI and metaphors, asking the question what do we mean when we say AI?
Language is metaphorical, bridging the gap between our feelings and the thing itself. Why are metaphors important in the language of AI? It allows us to understand and convey things that are complex. The person who controls the metaphors sets AI in motion, it lets us think about the future relationship and needs to be described with clarity and regulations. So, what do we actually want AI to do?
Q&A for the session (Artificial) Intelligence featuring Simone Rebaudengo (oio.studio), Nick Seaver (Tufts University) and Maya Indira Ganesh (Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence)
Do you want a robot president? Let’s talk about the potential power of science-fiction stories. Have you read Dune? Watched Bladerunner? How about the Parable of the Sower? The Earthsea series?
Cultural references as found in science-fiction novels have a huge impact on what the tech in the coming years might look and feel like. But most of all, on our collective expectations and imagination of a possible future. To exemplify this, Joanna McNeil (author of Lurking: How a Person Became a User and upcoming novel, Too Early For The Future) shares several examples from recent pop culture. The film Minority Report had a workshop in early production days that brought together a group of futurists to imagine the future that is both possible but also looks good in a Hollywood movie. Also Elon Musk has in a way inspired many to think about what mainstream space travel could be like. Jose Fernandez, a Hollywood costumer who created many iconic costumes and dresses in major blockbuster movies such as Batman and Marvel movies, contributed to shaping the general understanding of what the future might look like since movies are often connected to what people actually think and remember.
This talk stresses that science-fiction stories might not necessarily teach us about our future, but rather shape our present. Why are we attracted to some visualisations of human culture right now? How does the storytelling methods of science fiction allow us to feel where we do NOT want to go culturally? To conclude her talk, Joanna highlights the potential of science-fiction to inspire and to constructively criticize technology of the future.
Consider an object near you right now. How big is it? How does it feel? Who made the object? How are people using it in unexpected ways? How does it end? Are you up for trying another experiment? Write about the object. Writing about objects forces you to be specific - it makes you think about a specific place, time, people and context of its use, thus it makes you think about the past, present and future of this object.
A History of the Future in 100 Objects is a fictitious novel set in the year 2100 that introduced 100 objects. By looking back, it describes our present and possible near future. A BBC series inspired Adrian Hon, CEO and Co-Founder of Six to Start, to write the novel.
Adrian urges you to be specific when you learn about things. Consider its materiality and qualities like size, weight and comfort when using it. Also other aspects like who physically made this object and how people are using it in unexpected ways. But why 100 objects?
“With decentralised blockchains we get this thing back that we can actually own things on the internet - and I think that’s pretty neat.”
If you’re at an early stage of learning about Web3, Mikkel Malmberg’s talk provides the perfect introduction. He recounts his initial contact with Web3 and how he started off being sceptical of the space. His talk takes us on a journey of his experiences and experiments in Web3. Mikkel charts the progression from Web1, to Web2, and then discusses the differences and new possibilities emerging with Web3. He touches on topics like smart contracts, NFTs, cryptocurrencies, and different types of blockchains. Mikkel also highlights the importance of community within Web3 and explores how the way people share their identity online is shifting with blockchain technology. His attitude towards Web3 has become more positive and optimistic over time and he has created several successful projects in the space which he also presents during his talk.
“What are the manifestos that we want to live under?”
Penny Rafferty believes that technology should be social, collaborative, and emergent, prioritising culture over structures. She has been applying DAO thinking to issues in the art world in Berlin since 2018. This led to the emergence of the Black Swan DAO which has the goal of channelling resources from established institutions to cultural practitioners. In the context of cultural labour becoming increasingly precarious, the Black Swan DAO model is a response which enables practitioners to collectively manage resources. Penny details her experiences with the Black Swan DAO and other Web3 initiatives she has worked on. The Black Swan DAO serves as a fascinating case study of applying Web3 principles and technology to bring positive change in the cultural and creative sector.
“When tech moves fast and breaks things, who picks up the pieces after?”
Kyle McDonald is an artist working with code who has done a lot of work researching the ecological impact of the Ethereum network. He shows the findings of this research which he has also published as an in-depth report. Kyle reflects on how the amount of energy consumption will drop significantly once Ethereum transitions from proof-of-stake to proof-of-work - two different methods of validating transactions on the blockchain. That will improve things but Kyle’s research shows a lot of ecological damage has been created as a result of Ethereum so far which he believes need to be remedied. He has created an artistic response in the form of NFTs titled Amends, designed to capture all historical emissions from three major NFT marketplaces. The work is priced to fully fund carbon mitigation. He presents the full concept behind this project and muses on the signal that is sent if the NFTs are sold but also the larger significance if the work doesn’t sell.
Q&A for the session Get together with Web3 featuring Mikkel Malmberg, Penny Rafferty, Kyle McDonald
“The conflict between emotions and conscious rationality is at the core of what it means to be a human in the 21st century.“
The conflict between emotional and rational thinking is perhaps the greatest dilemma of the present. Magnus Nilsson encourages us to use the gift that is a conscious mind to investigate our subconscious, our emotions. Rationalising can be the delay, making us wait until a crucial point to make a decision. Because, if you really think about it - didn't you already know?
Magnus walked us through the different stages of his career. He told us the story of Fäviken, how and why it led to the end. He discussed how we, as people, often rationalise our decisions after initially making them guided by emotions. But what if it’s also as rational and valid a decision as a completely conscious one? What if we re-learn how to act in the forms of sensations and emotions?
Jonas Stojiljkovic Pedersen and Magnus Borgkvist Johansson. Malmö based instrumental duo Solar is a cosmic blend of postrock and John Carpenter flavoured influences where drums and synthesizers is the driving force.
The expression is wide, from vast soundscapes with hypnotic arpeggios and expressive drums to dark, doom influenced tracks that seems to reflects a place where darkness has reigned since the beginning of time. Solar produces music in a high pace and keep exploring and widen their sound and influences on every new track produced. It’s manifested on stage where they take the audience on a journey through time and space, light and darkness. This piece, called "Future energy", was created especially for the closing keynote of The Conference 2019.
Dr. James Beacham is a particle physicist searching for answers to the biggest open questions of physics using the largest experiment ever, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. He hunts for dark matter, gravitons, quantum black holes and dark photons as a member of the ATLAS collaboration, one of the teams that discovered the Higgs boson in 2012. He ended The Conference 2019 with a science class out of this world and a reminder of that to physics – we're all the same.
“Cash allows everybody to use it, it doesn’t care who you are.”At The Conference 2019, author and economic hacker Brett Scott made the case for keeping cash. He talked about – not a “cashless society” – but a “bankful society”, referring to institutions and states that all are pushing for a more digitized money system.
"Measurement is the beautiful act when humans get involved and take facts to data"At The Conference 2019, Data science professor Dr. Andrea Jones-Rooy (NYU), talked about the pitfalls to be mindful of when working with data. Andrea explained the dangers of just scratching the surface of the data and how important it is to look beyond. We should look at the data as subjective because if we look at the data with an expectation of answers, we will find them and miss out on everything else. Instead, Dr. Andra Jones-Rooy wants us to start with the question. E.g. Why are women leaving the company? Why are they more unlikely to have higher positions? By asking questions, maybe we someday can point out a good measurement for diversity. What are the inputs and outputs and how do you create diversity?
"We’re all going to fucking die"
Green house emission, climate change. Big words with a scary tone. At The Conference 2019, Sustainability specialist Anna Åhnberg from Oatly told us that we SHOULD be scared but she also encouraged us not to freeze in panic. Everyone should, and could, act and that includes the food companies too. The food industry accounts for 25% of the worlds global gas emissions which is more than all the transport industries together. Anna Åhnberg has one strong message – the food industry should talk more about their environmental impact. By acknowledging the impact every product has, the consumers finally have the opportunity to be aware and compare different food. How much impact on the environment had your breakfast today?
Who is the every day person? What is your identity? And more importantly, is there such a thing? A while ago, Alina Bliumis went out on a mission to find the answer. She searched the web and after diving into big chunks of data she found out that most of us are 28 years old, have black hair and brown eyes. She also found out that most people don't believe in global warming and that most of us owns a bed and a smartphone. By analyzing the numbers, we would now believe that we have the answer to the question of how a every day person looks and act like, but be aware. Alina Bliumis warns us that in reality this might look a bit different. “It seems unlikely that all metrics reflects the true reality” she says.
With help from Amazon’s Alexa, Anthony Onumonu, Principal software engineer from BBC R&D, talks about designing and developing interactive experiences on smart speakers. Anthony shared research from BBC’s ”Talking with machines!” project, combining cutting edge technology and storytelling. Skipping to the million dollar question: Have we solved interactive voice technology? No, this is just the beginning.
"Voice technology is the gap between what AI actually is and what people believe it is"
Nicole He is an artist and programmer who use technology for creative work, combined with an interest in current technology of AI and the character of AI. Voice technology could be seen as the gap between the real AI and the AI character in our imagination. The cutting edge tech is created for things that can make money, but that shouldn’t stop us from using them to make art. In different creative projects Nicole has incorporated voice technology, such as the” True Love Tinder Robot”, the “Secret Dunny Box” and “Garden Friends”. They all have in common that we can interact with the technology in different ways and it creates different feelings and experiences. However - according to Nicole voice technology is not perfect yet. There’s a difference in how we think it should work and how it actually works. It’s interesting now and we don’t have to wait for the AI to be perfect to use it, there’s room to make great things with it.
We’re entering the beginning of a technological shift where machines get more and more humanized. Daniel Padgett, Conversational Design Lead at Google, works to put people in the centre and optimize technology for the future, and in this talk from The Conference 2019, Daniel draws from from his vast experience within voice technology and teach us about the complexities and opportunities of working with voice as an interface.
Journalist Kris De Decker writes about low tech solutions to high tech problems. At The Conference 2019, Kris walked us through his solar powered website Low tech magazine and the design decisions required to make it work. Internet, and with it, the digital industries consumes enormous amounts of energy and as such, has a huge impact on the climate. To create a more sustainable online magazine, Kris and his team revisited old school techniques in web design.
At The Conference 2019, Zara Rahman, Director of Programs at The Engine Room spoke about the unintended impact of technology in relation to identity. How do identification technologies shape our own identities? And how did we come about to decide how to measure this? The talk examines who gets to decide the borders that tell you who you are and how the ability to self-identify is what makes us human. Does more data and tech automatically mean progress? What is progress and how does human power affect humans?
Sci-fi and religion alike, have always been concerned with dilemmas we now associate with transhumanism. What does resurrection or immortal life feel like? Will you still be ”you”? The idea of mind uploading has been a prevalent feature in wildly imaginative series like Altered Carbon, but now we seem to be on the verge of realisation of similar technologies with Elon Musk’s Neuralink project. Essayist Meghan O’Gieblyn shares her story that begin as a devout Christian, later to become fascinated by the seemingly secular narratives of Kurzweil. From Dante to 20th century transhumanists via the alchemists, O’Gieblyn shows how ”existential questions are always going to rely on metaphors”. We need to be wary of the metaphors we use, because they shape our consciousness and have had a history of leading to fundamentalism, religious or secular. Who knows that the right answers are, but at least we need to look beyond our Cartesian dualism of body and mind.
Anyone who’s seen AMC’s series Halt and Catch Fire knows the importance of representation. Two out of four main characters are female tech pioneers in the early 80s. Claire L. Evans’ book Broadband traces the real story of women behind the solitary geniuses of history, who tend to be men. What if unique solutions and social networks like Microcosm or Echo (both created by women) had received the same attention and capital that e.g. the WWW got in the early 90s? In her talk Evans explores the untravelled paths of history to balance the narrative and to show us the radically different now we could have lived in. Outreach, representation and care – what if all those things were taken into account when designing and coding solutions? Care, especially is a word we don’t hear a lot anymore. But if we’re going to survive the future and its challenges, we need all the help we can get. Which means we need to see more non-males represented in the tech industry.
“What is money? In my meaning it’s the best innovation ever. It’s a trust system, we put more trust in money than we do in religion.”Jonas Hedman is Professor at the Department of Digitalization at Copenhagen Business School. His research interest concerns the digital transformation in the finance sector and includes topics such as cashless society, fintech revolution, payment ecosystems, payment innovations, open API and central bank digital currency.Money – such as coins, banknotes and account money – are global, general purpose mediums of exchange with an unrestricted usage. In the future, however, experts like Jonas foresee a new type money: one that is intelligent or smart, money that we can program for specific uses. In essence, “smart money” is a value exchange instrument that is based on computer protocols which can facilitate, verify or enforce present conditions for its appropriation as a means of payment.
Jacopo is an interaction designer at frog, a global design and strategy firm. He works on design research and product definition for a range of digital channels, from consumer applications to corporate websites. He’s fascinated by complex systems and how they can be optimized for usability and delight through design.
His experience spans into different industries like financial services, telco, automotive and consumer electronics and at The Conference he shared some design opportunities risen from the dawn of the cashless society.
Have you ever fantasized about 3D printing your own food? Sakaki and Koyama from Open Meals are making a 3D printing sushi restaurant in Tokyo and want to visualize how the future of food will look like. Can you, and should you, digitalize, transmit and reproduce all kinds of food and perhaps create a digital food revolution?
”AI is just another tool, but also not just another tool”
Che-Wei Wang runs a small design studio with his wife, where they explore computational and generative design. In their studio they have the tools to build prototypes in a single day. Working with CAD (computer-aided design) tools for many years, he has seen how these have always been meant to facilitate a human process. With the recent influx of AI in design however, generative design software has arrived big time. In many cases however, these tools are digital black boxes that often produce results that are surprising to the designers themselves. Showing examples of actual products he has created, Wang shows how human aesthetics and intuition often gets lost along the way. He argues that we should work to adapt AI software to accept human feedback, instead of reducing all kinds of inputs to numbers. Rather than going down the rabbit hole with automated design, we should really be looking at how things like CAD can become tools for human-aided design - especially now that we’re beginning to produce three-dimensional objects like furniture using generative design.
Cyrus Clarke is storing holiday pictures in his plants. Yes, you read that right. This talk is about how to grow your own Cloud and what happens when combining art with science. What will it take for humans to truly value nature and how can we intervene and draw attention to something as seemingly abstract and immaterial as data consumption before it’s too late. DNA as a storage medium is the most efficient known data storage medium in the universe, so why not storage the whole planet’s data in organisms such as plants and trees? Clarke has worked with nature as technology and plant geneticists to develop techniques to embed plants with data and how this might lead us to Data Forests.
Abie Philbin Bowman is an Irish comedian, broadcaster, podcast host and also quite the expert on voting systems. In particular Ireland’s voting system. During his talk at The Conference 2019 he tried to make the Irish voting system more sexy by explaining how Ranked Choice Voting works. This ranking system can create a more collaborative politics and could help resolve the identity crisis currently fracturing big-tent parties like the Democrats/Labour. It’s a different way to work with ongoing democracy systems and rates don’t always win. Different counts give different numbers and it could be seen as a way how to hack the democracy and voting systems around the world.
”it’s a profoundly human act to give feedback to each other on our creative work”
Mark d’Inverno is not only a professor of computer science – he is also an accomplished jazz musician with both skill and feeling. His talk is more concerned with the latter: the craft of creative production. He believes the discourse has focussed too much on creativity as a power in the mind which leads to us trying to create computer systems which simulate ’heroic agency' where what matters is the final product. He believes that the modern understandings of creativity from psychology which lead to this way of designing and envisaging AI is a mistake. He subscribes instead to Dewey’s notion that art is not about the final piece itself but about the human experience of making and experiencing it. In his background as a teacher, d’Inverno works a lot with creative feedback – creating safe environments – physical and virtual - where feedback can be motivational and personalised. And he believes this is where AI can help. If we want to approach the world with the curiousity of a musician or artist, then rigorously designed AI can help us get a stronger sense of our shared world.
Poet, composer and musician Vincent Bahar has quickly made a name for herself at the cultural stages in south of Sweden and Copenhagen. With a combination of experimental drones, Persian instruments and timeless spoken poetry, she lets you into her very own universe and opens the door to an undiscovered, transcendent space. Earlier this year Inkonst described her performance as: “Rolling Persian rhythms that carry hypnotic flows of words and electronics. Intonal quality, no less!”
Vincent plays the 6,000 year old frame drum called Daf that carries mystical mantras dating back to the Sassanian Empire. Right now she is working on an immersive Virtual Reality healing experience that centres around the rhythm of Daf to help people come back to their very own pulse and come back to themselves.
”An inferno of will and intentions, all suppressed feelings, two dogs and a speed lane. Things that leads up to Need For Speed a two man gang from Malmö Sweden.” Need for Speed is a Malmö duo consisting of the fabulous Martin Nilsson & Felix Mårtensson.
It is chill pop music with a healthy dose of dark indie electronic RnB. They both have their roots in noir punk band RA. Soft touch can be found on Spotify together with their other releases.
“I find it incredibly odd that our world has changed but our vision of the built environment hasn’t”Mollie Claypool dives into her work as an architecture theorist concerned with “discrete automation”. This is a way of bringing the so-called digital architecture of our current practices together with automation of processes familiar from other industries. With a post-work future in mind, we need to reimagine the way we construct buildings. The elements that make up a building have, in fact, not changed essentially since the industrial revolution. While the tools architects use have developed to handle more and more complex designs, the actual process of building large-scale structures still requires thousands of individual parts and a myriad of contractors and subcontractors. Automation could help in reducing the resources required, as well as giving the end user a more direct role in shaping the built environment. It could help drive systemic change and result in more flexible, agile and resilient buildings with smaller carbon footprints.
Curiositi is the musical project of Matilda Berggren and Emil Johansson. Being veterans of the swedish electro/indie-scene the couple met while touring italy with their respective bands in 2007 but took up writing and producing together in 2016 when Johansson put his old project Parker Lewis to rest. Since Curiositis first release the act has slowly built a reputation for being next level producers and writers, making heavily R&B-influenced pop music echoing of soft rock, quiet storm and even new jack swing.
The debut album Skin Love came out through the band’s own Inertial Recordings in March 2019, celebrated by the band through an exhibition and gesamtkunstwerk at art space Makeriet in their native Malmö. Instead of a release party, Curiositi collaborated with performance artist Daniel Kokko, artist Lisa Peterson, graphic designer Ivar Lantz and various fragrance artists and distillers to create an all round experience of the themes of Skin Love. This event also marked the premiere for Curiositi’s silent live shows. A concept where the band perform their music in a storefront window to bypassers who are able to listen through headphones on the other side of the storefront window.
Curiositi is currently doing finishing touches on their sophomore album Kenoma, slated for release early 2020. The first single Accidie was released early summer 2019 and was by far the smallest act to be featured on the Spotify playlist New Music Friday Sweden
Industrial designer and co-founder of non-agency Petra Lilja speaks about the weight of human influence on the earth and how to design for a better future for all species. Can we go from a human centered to a multi-species centered future?
“It is not about who owns what, but how to give access to everyone”Maria Malho (M.Soc.Sc.) is an expert in societal transformations. She works at the leading Nordic think tank Demos Helsinki, who’s mission is to reconfigure society in the post-industrial era. Maria is specialized in future studies and at The Conference 2019, she shared her thoughts on universalism and fairness for the next era.
Sam Gregory is an award-winning technologist and advocate who is currently the Program Director of WITNESS, an organization which supports anyone, anywhere to use video and technology to fight for human rights.
Sam leads work around emerging opportunities and threats like artificial intelligence, proactive approaches to malicious ‘deepfakes', innovation in eyewitness video, and challenges to trust and evidence. He also supervises WITNESS’ Tech Advocacy work, which advocates to technology companies on how products protect human rights and develops tools such as ProofMode for better authentication of contentious video.
Xiaowei Wang is a designer, engineer and researcher who focuses on the centrality of landscape and ecology in the digital world, building inquiry and community through public art, data visualization and writing. At The Conference 2019, they shared their research on consumerism in China, with an extra focus on the rural Taobao villages.
At the Guardian, Amanda Michel is Global Director and senior product manager of Contributions, a core part of the Guardian’s expanding reader revenue model. In 2018 the Guardian announced the support of more than one million readers around the globe and in 2019 that it had broken even.
While subscriptions and paywalls have been the preferred solution of many renowned news outlets, The Guardian has chosen the route of voluntary donations. At The Conference 2019, Amanda shared the story of this decision and its quite interesting effects.
"I am in huge favor of low tech data journalism"Dr. Bahareh Heravi is a Data and Computational Journalism researcher, trainer, practitioner and innovator who will share how news rooms of all sizes can work with data to construct stories, and that not only being big data but small data sets.
Natalie and Kumar are both video journalists at VGTV, a Norwegian TV-channel connected to the Verdens gang news outlet. At The Conference 2019, they showcased their work behind ”The Tinder Swindler” story that has gained a lot of attention wide and far for it’s format as well as content.
Paul Soulellis is an artist and educator based in Providence, RI. His practice includes teaching, writing and experimental publishing, with a focus on queer methodologies and network culture.
Paul poses important questions about history and erasure and has long been using publishing as a form of resistance. Innovation and creation is about power, but so is the act of deciding what to maintain and preserve, not least in the digital world. What is signal and what is noise?
At The Conference 2019, Lisa Ding, product designer at Twitter's “Design for Conversation” department shared insights and considerations on how to design for a healthy public conversation in a digital universe. Drawing from her actual work and experiences at Twitter.
“You can have weird and dangerous features in a platform if the core is that you are never gonna scale.”Internet artist Darius Kazemi is known for his many (and funny) Twitter bots under the moniker Tiny Subversions. He is also the founder of Friendscamp, a Twitter like social network with only 50 users which is run from a server in his own home. A more human scale social network built upon the input from the users. At The Conference 2019, Darius shared his vision of a radical new direction for social network sites.
Lara Houston, researcher at City, University of London, lifts the importance of maintenance and repair in the digital age. Can we have a right to repair? In the lack of information and access, we tend to upgrade to new things, instead of value the things.
Open source investigator Gabi Ivens works as a human rights researcher focusing largely on visual documentation of human rights abuses. She locates, analyses and preserves publicly available information to use in human rights investigations and researches the ethical and social implications, as well as the technical challenges, of this work.
Giorgio Patrini is CEO and Chief Scientist at Deeptrace, an Amsterdam-based startup building deep learning technology for detecting and understanding fake videos. An anti-virus system for deep fakes, kind of. Video manipulation is getting more refined and whilst a fake Obama speech might be fairly easy to unravel, the danger lies in the subtleties and details.
“If you think of your most favorite or least favorite social network, and then try and imagine what it would look like as a physical space. It’s really easy to imagine if it’s a space you would like to go to every day or not.”How can we sort out the good attributions from existing platforms and create new ones? Social networks have been deeply criticized over the years, but Are.na founder Charles Broskoski wants to turn the subject on how to develop and improve them instead. He wants to start a conversation about the important questions, What is a good platform and what patterns does it have? He describes Are.na as a platform for connecting ideas and building knowledge and explains that the users have a lot of power and influence over the platform.
"There is a lot of profit to be gained from all this diversity. The problem right now is that we're not really good at it."
The notion of "play" is changing. Let's look at the potentials and possible pitfalls of the new playful technologies.
Let’s unleash the joy of co-creation.Featuring: Tendayi Viki (Benneli Jacobs), Charlotta Ahlberg (Volvo) and Kenjiro Kirton (HATO) during The Conference 2018.
“If you could see the future, what would you have for dinner?”
Dr. Lisa Mosconi, one of the leading experts on how Alzheimer’s is related to our diets, knows better than most that a longer life doesn’t necessarily mean a more healthier life. In her talk, she theorizes about how we – through our diets – can try to slow down the aging process of our brains.
D. Fox Harrell is Professor of Digital Media and Artificial Intelligence at MIT. His research focuses on the relationship between imagination and computation. He founded the MIT Imagination, Computation and Expression Laboratory (ICE Lab) in order to develop new forms of computational narrative, gaming and digital media.
With an emphasis on equity, Harrell explores how virtual identities both implement and transform persistent issues of class, gender, sex, race, ethnicity and the dynamic construction of social categories.
The video contains Creative Commons BY-NC-ND:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
“Better is not the same as good, better hasn't an agenda.”What is better? Who’s better? Who decides? The design of living matter can be seen as synthetic biology, a way of engineering biology for a better world. Could synthetic biology create life to save the environment? Daisy Ginsberg guides us through research done into the past to help us see what we value the most in the future. By using synthetic biology we can evoke a feeling of loss. Humans dream about better. But “better” isn’t the same as good and changes all the time. What better do we want?
“We believe we all should have a say in how we make our society.”
TaiwanPDIS co-founder Shu Yang Lin introduces us to rethink the interaction between the government and the civil society. In Taiwan, events for civil hackers are arranged in order for people to participate and together try to improve democracy by means of technology. By changing public websites and making them more democracy friendly, they are able to ”fork” the government and take down all the unwanted sites and make new ones instead. Shu Yang Lin describes this as a non-violent form of communication, an open-space technology that allows the entire society to engage in rational discussions fixed by hackers. It can be seen as an experiment on how to create consensus and gain trust within a large group of people even though they don’t know each other.
“You don't really know who you are until you're forced to defend it.”Journalism today is under a lot of pressure. At the same time, more and more hatred have grown on the internet over the past years. This has part to do with populism and other forces that are blatantly undermining the democracy. In her talk, based on years of research, Karin Pettersson examines how social media, Silicon Valley and different threats to democracy are interrelated. She states that the situation is complex, and that public discourses could be the survival of modern journalism.
“This is all feels like a dream now, but technology and society went along really great some years ago.”Norwegian journalist Stråle Grut’s work for NRKbeta have been described as an experiment on how to make a better comment section. By creating a comment section quiz, it ensures that people know what they are commenting on online. It’s a simple solution to a complex problem, and also a way to improve internet debate by requiring participants to answer these few basic questions first. It also generates people to reflect more, make them become more rational in their thinking and, hopefully, behave better on social medias. The experiment have been referred as ”the best new journalism idea ever” by the American futurist Amy Webb.
"I didn’t want to fight for my already god-given right to live."This highly personal talk start with actress and filmmaker Ahd Hassan Kamel telling us about her hometown Riyadh in Saudi Arabia (or, as Ahd calls it, the Magic Kingdom). She walks us through childhood traumas and events that has shaped and changed the course of her life so far, with death and rebirth as two constants. She tells us about being broken down and about trying to put her life back together again. It’s a wonderful feat of storytelling, as well as a testament of how you can break stereotypes and make your mark in the world.
“The problem is that the industry isn’t working with ethics and childrens rights.”On the topic of child-centric design, Shuli Gilutz talks about they way that children interact with technology. Many think that the mere interaction is changing the notion of play, but is it? Play, much like motivation, is central to a child’s development (physical, social, emotional and cognitive). All these important factors bring about another pressing matter: ethics. However, most of the industry working with children’s products don’t really have a child-centered design – meaning they don’t conduct enough research using, well, children.
Play is crucial for a person’s development when it comes to language, problem solving and social interaction (just to name a few examples). Play is also a tool for unleashing creativity and innovation, while at the same time having the perk of being a universal language. But… what is play, really? According to Fredrika Inger, Global Business Area Manager at Children’s IKEA, play is deeply personal. Play has to be spontaneous. Not serious, not obligated. We play to repair, connect, escape, explore, and express.
"Kids don’t the see the divide between the physical and digital play – but parents do."The digital world is a new addition to the already wide repertoire of a child’s play landscape, according to Magnus Göransson. During his talk, he speaks about the “fluidity” of kids constant switching between the physical and digital, as well as letting us in on some Lego pilot projects that are dealing with Augmented Reality technology. This, moving forward, will lead to a natural match between “the real” and “the digital” that can spark the playing children’s fantasies even more.
“Your brain is modeling reality in real time.”
How do virtual brains and virtual reality affect the way we think, what we do and who we are? Alexander Silva Lopera, a psychologist that specializes in neuroscience at Neurons Inc, guides us through the world of virtual reality and how our brains react to different virtual environments. Our brains are modelling reality in real time and can also create new realities. Virtual reality technology lets us be anyone at any time, unlike any other technology. The way we act or react to things can change with virtual reality, and situations can feel very different in a virtual environment.
“We believe what we experience first, and we question or check the facts later.”
Our identities are fluent, fragmented and influenced by different processes and influences. They are very much connected to our sense of reality. But then what is 'reality', really? Our reality is the stage on which the 'story' of our lives is played. Typically, we are the main characters, and other people are either participators or spectators.
As emerging technologies such as AR get embedded into our everyday experiences, altering the way we understand and interact with the world, the choices how we believe what we experience, who and what can we really trust?
"When eternity is your deadline – what values will end up in the center?"
Victoria Percovich Gutierrez, sustainability strategist with an MBA, and Åsa Bjerndell, lead architect and development manager, are part of the team at White Arkitekter that is working with "Råängen", a unique urban development project in the city of Lund, and its client Lund's Cathedral.
At The Conference, Victoria and Åsa talked about how Råängen is challenging both the traditional values of architecture, urban development and market economy, as well as explain how the classic models of success are normally achieved and created.
What values are crystallized when eternity defines a project? And what purpose is given to the value of sustainability when the perspective of time goes beyond everything we know and rely on today?
“We have been designing nature for tens of thousands of years and more.”
Charles Darwin said that "biological evolution creates design without a designer”. But what if we could design life somewhere else? With synthetic biology we can, in a way, reprogram life. Just as travel abroad permits new insights into home, so too does the search for life elsewhere allow a more mature scientific, philosophical and ethical perception of life on Earth. We have to learn to live after the land we live in, both on and away from earth, says Astrobiologist and Adjunct professor (Brown University) Dr. Lynn Rothschild.
“Business plans serve to crush your dreams.”In this talk, Tendayi Viki explores how corporate leaders can go beyond creating physical spaces and innovation labs in order to provide real space for everyone within the organisation to innovate. He presents innovation as someone giving you a bag with pieces of a puzzle, but without a picture of what the puzzle actually looks like. He also talks about the importance of providing people with tool boxes and coaches to create innovation, because it’s a privilege to have both tools and tutors.
"Creativity is not innovation, creativity is a skill."
Drawing from her knowledge and experiences from the innovation departments in large corporate environments, Charlotta talks about how you can take advantage of the enormous strengths and collective brainpower in a global enterprise. For this, she explains how she came to the conclusion that the 6 Ts (two, thirst, thoughts, trust, truce, tenacity) are the real building blocks of success.
“Play is the original form of co-creation.”Being an expert in the noble art of working together with others, Kenjiro Kirton explains how and why co-creation is fundamental for innovation and creativity. He also speaks about the importance of providing people with tools that can challenge how and where innovation can happen.
“Some things are too fucking good to be real.”
Product and interaction designer Simone Rebaudengo tries to bend this idea of fiction and reality through his own projects and products by looking at everyday objects. He plays with the idea of redefining the value of ‘fake’ objects and what the result of that can tell us about the future. Questions such as whether the ‘fake’ objects actually might be better than the real ones or not, and will objects actually be objective in the future? What happens when objects have opinions and are biased? And what does it feel like to be a vacuum cleaner? Simone ends the talk with exclaiming that things are only gonna get weirder from here.
“There’s a concrete and causal relationship between the public understanding of technology and the stability and inequality of democracy in societies that goes on top of it.”
“Code is the new lingua franca.”
Linda Liukas, author of the popular “Hello Ruby” book series, started writing because she thought storytelling was missing from computer science education. Although coding is an overarching theme in the books, her writing is not exclusively about coding. Linda has a great admiration for famous educators like Piaget, and she has a mission to prepare kids for a world where so many of the problems that they encounter are computer-related. She points out that computers are tools for self-expression and problem solving. In her opinion, computers are abstract machines and most of all, technology is built on humanity.
"When we create a precarious society, fear becomes a very powerful political device."
In order to build, create and maintain a sustainable future, we need to start a boring revolution. Believing that talking only about the cool parts of science (like AI, new technology and robots) is not going to help us form this revolution. We need to go back to basics. We need to go over things like bureaucracy, governance och the principles of democracy to create trust. Without this trust simple things go wrong. Democratizing the means of production and innovation is all about building towards a counsciousness. We need to empower people in order to form a new type of government. We need to reinvent the concept of governance, and we need to do it now. To have this, as it were, “boring” conversation is really critical.
"The economy is designed. We designed it. And we designed it to do a specific thing."
Circular economy is a mindset, and the economy is designed. Those are some of Chris Grantham’s ideas put forth in his talk. He tackles how we can move from a linear economy to a circular one – from the astronomical costs of plastic, food waste and cars, to a better everyday. The economy can serve us more equitably, if we are able to fundamentally rethink how it should be designed.
"The future of Internet is decentralized."
In this his session, Muneeb Ali, founder of Blockstack, focus on issues that stems from when a few set of companies has conquered our digital lives. The inevitable consequence of this is that we blindly have to trust companies at which the platforms and services our communication is taking place at. To put it more frankly and dramatic; the internet is owned, the platforms are our prisons and with that our digital freedom is a distant faded memory.
But what if we could reverse this? What if we could re-structure the digital so that it’s becoming more alike the physical world which follows property rights and privacy policies? With the current state of the digital world as backdrop, Muneeb presents how a new digital infrastructure has the potential to set us free.
"Innovation is not just a moment that can come from crisis; crisis can come from innovation."After disruption comes absorption, and that is how something new becomes normal. Nathaniel Raymond, the founding Director of the Signal Program on Human Security and Technology at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, takes us through historical moments of innovation to show how crisis can cause innovation, but also how innovation can cause crisis - something that can lead to new political, moral and ethical compounds. He argues that the absorption of innovation is now more important that invention itself. Through innovation and design, we can redefine what is normal.
Q&A with Alexander Chen (Google Creative Lab), Kate Sicchio and Gene Kogan.
Moderator:Johanna Koljonen
Q&A with Dr Rand Hindi (Snips), Sebastian Schmieg and Stephanie Dinkins (Stony Brook University)
Moderator:Johanna Koljonen
"You can’t formally define creativity."
The scientific fields aren’t the only ones rapidly getting used to the thought of applying AI within their practices. Artist and Programmer Gene Kogan talks about how you as a professional within fields of technology, culture, and art, can apply machine learning in your work. Whether it is generating 3-d models, images, music, text, or video; machine learning and artificial intelligence can make it possible.
Q&A with Jamie Bartlett (Demos), Amy Whitaker (New York University), and Nathaniel Raymond (Harvard Humanitarian Initiative).
Moderator: Johanna Koljonen
"What does music look like?"
In this visual and musical presentation, Google’s Alexander Chen explores how music and code is interconnected. By experimenting with music, he shows us how music is math, and that we can understand music in new ways by taking it apart. By combining music and code, we can think about music and creativity in a different way.
"Nature is the best teacher. Everything in nature is feeding into itself."
Everything is interconnected in this world. In order to encourage sustainable development as a designer, you need to think like an ecosystem. According to Dr Leyla Acaroglu, Director of the Un-School of Disruptive Design, creating a sustainable economy is only possible if we move beyond the linear systems that ultimately leave us with waste products. The solution to this? Thinking in circularity.
"Half of the jobs in the future will be the combination of a human and a machine working together."
When Rand Hindi’s dad lost his job as a trader to a machine, something dawned on him. He was working to automate the jobs that his father was doing. He realized that we can find ways to coexist with AI, instead of it devouring our jobs. In his talk, Rand Hindi puts forth a 4-step test if your job is at risk, and concludes that it all comes down to adaptive learning and working together with machines.
"When you train algorithms on limited data, what you get is holes in the results."
We are at the start of an epoch that will change everything, Stephanie Dinkins says about AI. But does the robots that we create represent everyone? In order to avoid problematic machine bias, she asks us developers to bring different people to the table. Developers shouldn’t be afraid to rock the boat and encourage a little discomfort in the workplace. AI should foster inclusivity, transparency and diversion.
"We create identies for our self everytime we take out our phone and do something."
Know your digital self as well as organisations and governments do. If you’re not prepared to go through that effort, you should probably go live in the woods. Vesselin Popov, Business Development Director for the University of Cambridge Psychometrics Centre, talks about the ongoing battle about freedom and privacy online. New ways of harvesting our digital profiles can take advantage of our vulnerabilities, giving way to questions about ethical data use.
More reading: https://gizmodo.com/the-other-cambridge-personality-test-has-its-own-databa-1823997062
Q&A with Mari Magnus (NRK), Vesselin Popov (University of Cambridge Psychometrics Centre) and Yousef Tuqan (Jumeirah Group).
Moderator:Johanna Koljonen
"Sitting down and really listen to your target group will give you what you need to create a concept on their premises."
It is always a challenge for producers to mirror a culture that they themselves aren’t a part of. Mari Magnus, Web Producer of NRK's web drama series SKAM, explains how and why your target group will give you everything you need to create a meaningful experience if you actually listen to them. Believe it or not - it is possible to compromise with your target group while making no compromises about how you produce a show.
"We need the best of us to stand up against the worst of us."
In the midst of political and social turbulence, the Arab youth are speaking up against patriarchal traditions, breaking boundaries of expression, and reshaping their identities.
Yousef Tuqan, Group VP of Jumeirah Group, explores the ways that the Arab digital generation is going to change the world. Traditional and modern values are constantly colliding and changing; it is a generation that is simultaneously lost, confused, and connected.
Q&A with Chris Grantham (IDEO), Ingrid Zeegers (Circular Friesland) and May Al-Karooni (Globechain.com).
Moderator:Johanna Koljonen
"Why do we not measure the value of redesign?"
It was when May Al-Karooni worked in an investment bank that was about to move, that she realized that big companies have a lot of waste. That was the start of Globechain. By digitalizing waste and turning it into a reuse marketplace, May Al-Karooni has created meaning out of what someone thought was waste – changing companies’ behavior and helping communities. The end of an object’s life may just be the beginning of it.
"Circular economy is a common sense economy."
Circular economy is a common sense economy, Ingrid Zeegers argues. In her talk, she shows us how we can move from waste to asset and move towards the goal of eliminating the concept of waste as we know it. As a part of the project Circular Friesland, working with sustainability in the province of Friesland in the Netherlands, Ingrid Zeegers shows us the key takeaways from the ambitious project.
"The stronger the light and the stronger explanation, the lesser you can see around it and whats happening."
Sociology Professor Saskia Sassen of Colombia University talks about how complex systems transforms society radically, but rather invisible by shifting capacities over time. Saskia focus on finance, the underlying steam engine that defines our epoch. She claims that the ownership of the city got trapped in real estate deals and concentrated power and wealth, which led to symptoms such as the election of Donald Trump as president.
Yet the city is a place where those without power can get to make history. Today digital is infrastructure, the question is how is it used and how it matters for equity, democracy, and rights? Saskia Sassen encourages people to find a simple DNA code that will enable to scale positive impact.
"It was easier for me to get to China than to get back to my hometown."
Urbanization is not just a geographical migration, it is also a cultural one. Erin Malone, Communications Director at Forward Together & Hometown Connect, is one of the millions of people in the US who has fled their rural birthplace in order to pursue a career in a bigger city. In her talk, she explains how our political and social reality is jeopardized when small towns are left in decline, and offers solutions that could create a bridge between both rural and urban environments.
Q&A with Erin Malone (Forward Together & Hometown Connect) and Nina Rappaport (Vertical Urban Factory)
Moderator:Johanna Koljonen
"How do you make a factory as a part of the streetscape?"
The outsourcing of industries from the western world is still one of the leading trends in manufacturing today. This has resulted in cities with no spaces left for large-scale manufacturing to return to. Nina Rappaport, Director of think tank Vertical Urban Factory, proves that there are new ways to sustainably host manufacturing in modern architectural structures.
"Doing nothing is not a luxury, it’s a ground for meaningful thoughts."
Digital artist and collector Jenny Odell talks about how work life shifted from an 8 hour workday into an always on approach. In this opening keynote, visual artist Jenny Odell will explore the architecture, politics, and rewards of nothing, arguing that the cultivation of nothing has new salience in the age of everything.
She wants us to reclaim the public spaces such as parks and libraries for personal reflection and restoration. Jenny believes time and places for the practice and art of doing nothing are crucial to uncover underlying problems and to understand yourself. She regularly spends time in a nearby rosegarden for observational activities such as bird watching and doing nothing to discover what unfolds from her inner journey and peace in mind.
Q&A with Caroline Jack (Data & Society), Muneeb Ali (Blockstack), and Amy Adele Hasinoff (University of Colorado).
Moderator:Johanna Koljonen