Live recordings

Swim - Lying to you

Tue, 05 Sep 2017 10:54:15 GMT

From The Conference 2017.

Q&A - Global Outlook

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 10:38:56 GMT

Q&A with Nazanin Daneshvar (Takhfifan), Jemma Xu (Tripalocal) & Toby Shapshak (Stuff).

Q&A - One-to-one - a new mode of communication

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 10:37:11 GMT

Q&A with Fernanda Saboia (Huge inc) & Martin Hoffman (ConvJournalism)

Moderator: Paulina Modlitba Söderlund

Q&A - Extremist communication

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 10:34:04 GMT

Q&A with Michael Krona (Malmö University) & Maura Conway (Dublin City University)

Moderator: Anders Mildner

Q&A - AI in Services

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 10:31:30 GMT

Q&A with Maya Weinstein (IBM Watson) and Deborah Harrison (Microsoft Cortana)

Moderator: Paulina Modlitba Söderlund

Q&A - Migration

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 10:26:43 GMT

Q&A with Latoya Peterson (Racialicious), Dragana Kaurin (Localization Lab) and Elena Pedrazzani (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies).

Q&A - Humans, Labour and Technology

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 10:22:56 GMT

Q&A with Guy Standing (University of London) and Sha Hwang (Nava) about humans, labour and technology.

Q&A - A Future City

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 10:20:25 GMT

Q&A with architect Liam Young (Tomorrow's Thoughts Today)

Moderator: Anders Mildner

Q&A - The Future of Food

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 10:18:12 GMT

Q&A with Isha Datar (New Harvest), Charles Spence (University of Oxford) and Arielle Johnson (Noma).

Moderator: Anders Mildner

Q&A - Being an Empathetic Company

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 10:16:02 GMT

Q&A with Leah Reich (Slack), Marcela Sapone (Hello Alfred) and Lain Shakespeare (Mailchimp)

Moderator: Paulina Modlitba Söderlund

Q&A - Online Harassment

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 10:09:15 GMT

Q&A with designers Caroline Sinders (Independent) and Michelle Mederos (Facebook).

Moderator: Paulina Modlitba Söderlund

Q&A - Getting real with virtual reality

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 09:59:15 GMT

Q&A with VR Filmmakers Jessica Brillhart (Google) and Gabo Arora (United Nations VR) and Creative director David Eriksson (North Kingdom).

Moderator: Anders Mildner

Angela Oguntala - Exploring alternative futures

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 19:09:44 GMT

”Visions are powerful because they inspire us, but also limit us”

The future is a place for our hopes and fears. For Angela Oguntala, thinking about the future is her job. In her talk, she shows us how different stories, from different parts of the world, can change our perspective and improve our understanding of each other.

How do we imagine the future? And most importantly, how will we get there? Angela shows how we can envision and create the best future possible.

Michelle Mederos - Online Harassment

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 18:49:48 GMT

”There is no magic way to get rid of all the internet trolls”

What can you actually do in a concrete fashion to design in order to decrease online harassment?

Michelle Mederos, Product Designer at Facebook, reminds us that in order to combat online harassment such as impersonation on social media platforms, design solutions need to be created with people, not for people. There is no perfect solution to solve a complex problem such as online safety, but by respecting the complexity of these issues, it is possible to make an impact on the systems allowing them.

Leah Reich - Being an empathetic company

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 18:34:53 GMT

”Empathy has morphed into a sort of catch-all for our collective desire to give a shit”

When one of Leah’s bosses made her cry she was taught that under no circumstances was she allowed to cry at work and that the office was no place for emotions. It’s out of this premise that she talks about the importance of empathy at work in order to be able to look at things from different perspectives. This gets even more relevant when we’re nowadays expected to bring our whole selves to the office.

At its most basic, empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. This ability is well needed if we effectively and meaningfully are to understand people that are shaped out of other norms, cultural preferences and experiences other than our own.

Leah also talks about how empathy within a company is not merely the process of identify a need and fix it with a new product or service. It runs deeper than that. Empathy can give you a completely new regard for others, and by being truly empathetic at work, open up a world for better understanding. One concrete proposal from Leah to better our ability to practice empathy in our workplace is to engage in a feedback session with someone you’d struggled with. By that, you are forced to listen and understand that person and take that understanding and do something with it. Leah, PhD in sociology, consider herself as a perspective counselor.

Marcela Sapone - Being an empathetic company

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 18:34:45 GMT

”What’s your formula? Make it stupidly simple so you will dream about it”

Marcela Sapone is the Co-Founder and CEO of Hello Alfred who has built a business model based on empathy. In the "Being an empathic company session" she talked about how to generate maximum value for your customers, employees and yourself.

Hello Alfred is a part service technology company who have managers visiting their customers to take care of things for them on their behalf so that they can make the most meaningful use of their time. Hello Alfred been described as “a fixer for your life”. The trust between company and customer is so strong that Marcela states that they’re the only company in the world who have the key to its customer’s home. In order to achieve this relationship between company and customer you must be able to master what it is that you do and in a ridiculously clear way communicate it to the public. In other words, what you do is compounded by how you do it. Marcela talk us through five things on her journey with Hello Alfred that she learned by having empathy as one of the company’s cornerstone.

Lain Shakespeare - Being an empathetic company

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 18:34:38 GMT

”Define your core values. Your product is not your values”

Lain Shakespeare like to compare empathetic companies to the best kind of neighbors. They have a good grasp on others perspective, are service orientated and partner with others to make a change for the better. With his role as Corporate Citizen Manager at MailChimp, Lain steer the company in the direction of acting as a good neighbor.

Lain stresses the importance of defining your values and have clear examples of what your core values are. The product or service of the company isn’t necessarily its core value. Lain take Mailchimp as an example, where the words “email” and “marketing” don’t constitute their core values. Instead when they express their values for the community they speak about humility, creativity and independence. According to Lain most companies lead with what they know instead of what they are. The former tends to take on a condescending perspective which from an empathetic perspective is not optimal. Out of his own experiences, Lain talks about how companies can make a holistic beneficial impact in the community.

Caroline Sinders - Online Harassment

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 18:34:19 GMT

”I think people are allowed to be dicks on the internet, but people should have the choice to opt out”

Designer and researcher Caroline Sinders breaks down the concept of online harassment and the legal regulations that are making it possible rather than impossible.

Attempts at regulating how we behave on the internet usually clash with the will to conserve our right to freedom of speech. But in reality, bad design is what lies at the core of the issue, and the only way to solve it might just be to tackle it from a design perspective.

David Eriksson - Getting real with virtual reality

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 17:25:00 GMT

”VR is one of the six technology innovation accelerators that will transform the way we live, the way we play, the way we communicate”

The notion that VR could make humans evolve into something better is not uncommon. But have we seen the peak of VR already? As a business revolving around VR this is a completely legitimate question because no one really knows how VR will play out, how we’ll profit from it. Mass adoption is still far away. So as a business where should you place your bets?

David Eriksson speaks about VR with a business perspective. He means to make VR meaningful as a tool for businesses and humans we need to create experiences that people want rather than just making people wanting experiences. So when creating VR experiences we have to design for humans, not features.

Gabo Arora - Getting real with virtual reality

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 17:22:37 GMT

”What is one person's horror is another person's revenge”

Can we change people’s minds and make them act for humans in crisis with the help of new technologies?

Gabo Arora from UN’s VR department believes so but you have to take a different approach than traditional mediums. VR creates opportunities for this but for people to act you need to make them feel empathy. It doesn’t work to just show people pain and suffering, because it doesn’t give you the chance to fantasize. Fantasizing is part of feeling greater empathy and that is why Gabo find ways to integrate more chances to fantasize for the user and he’s doing it through real storytelling in VR, not just pictures of pain and suffering, but with real people and real problems.

Jessica Brillhart - Getting Real with Virtual Reality

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 17:20:19 GMT

”The world that you build has to reflect the identity of the person in it”

How do we allow persons to actually feel what’s it’s like to sit in solitary confinement? VR has this possibility but VR is different from normal storytelling mediums, because what it does is changing the idea of a story. So how do we create good and meaningful VR film with this in mind?

Jessica Brillhart is the principal filmmaker for VR at google, before that she joined Google’s Creative Lab and has won numerous awards for her shorts and documentaries. She finds different ways of approaching VR by figuring out where people look, what’s engaging and who the user is, all this to create meaningful universes and good stories in VR film.

Interview: Isha Datar - Kristin Nord

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 16:34:22 GMT

Interview with Isha Datar (New Harvest) by Kristin Nord (HD-Sydsvenskan)

Matt Orlando - Worms, sustainability and innovation

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 16:31:39 GMT

”You can teach a skill. You can't teach personality”

The less you change, the less relevant you will be in any industry. Making a commitment to sustainability does not have to mean a sacrifice of quality.

Matt Orlando, Chef and owner of Amass restaurant in Copenhagen, explains his view on running a business responsively, while having a positive impact on both employees and on the industry.

He gives examples of how his team at Amass restaurant have found ways around one of the biggest problems of the industry; the problem of food waste. Through minimizing, re-refining, and redefining, they have discovered how to find the forgotten flavours of by-products.

Arielle Johnsson - The future of food

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 15:44:21 GMT

”Chefs are becoming autodidact researchers and scientists”

The future of food is going to be about flavor. Smell taste, touch, vision and hearing is super important when eating food. Is there some way we can enhance the flavor of food more than using traditional ways?

The wildly renowned restaurant Noma's resident scientist Arielle Johnson is a flavor scientist and right now she works on turning the knowledge and ethos of the kitchen into new inquiries and avenues for research, usually through the lens of flavor. She collaborates with chefs, designers, engineers, and other scientists around the world to dismantle the boundary between the kitchen and the laboratory.

Isha Datar - The future of food

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 15:42:11 GMT

”We can collect the cells and produce something like a hamburger or steak”

Our current systems for producing animal products are a threat to public health, the environment, and animals. There a lot of alternatives to animal products but somehow it’s just not the same. How do we solve this?

Isha Datar is the CEO of New Harvest, a company which uses cellular agriculture - the making of agriculture products from cell cultures rather than whole plants or animals. Imagine making eggs without hens, beef without cows and milk without cows, all this without the dangers from animal products.

Charles Spence - The future of food

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 15:39:46 GMT

”When food gets plated centrally people is willing to pay more”

Adding music to your eating experience could seem like a novelty, but its value has been scientifically proven by psychologist Charles Spence from Oxford University. We know that we eat as much with our eyes, as with our tongues and noses. We revel in sharing and browsing through gastroporn with our phones, but actually all of our senses are involved in the aesthetic experience of restaurant food. Charles presents research that shows how sound, colour – indeed the entire backdrop of the event affects what we prefer.

Food companies are beginning to take an interest in these result, be it what colour plate to use or what sounds go best with seafood. And it’s not all about selling at a premium, eg. finding the ideal colour combination to convey sweetness could reduce our requirement for calories. Augmented reality could even help us recreate food products that are becoming, or already are, scarce.

Interview: Sha Hwang - Kristin Nord

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 14:32:27 GMT

Interview: Sha Hwang - Kristin Nord

Sha Hwang - Humans, Labour and Technology

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 12:59:46 GMT

”Resist taking the path of least resistance”

Sha may have helped set up the American portal for health insurance enrollment and his own startup Nava – but he’s not your regular tech guy. Sha believes we live in a time of protests, talking to us about the infrastructure of protest as well as the protest of infrastructure.

Inspired by the movement behind visionaries like Rosa Parks, he stresses the importance for designers, writers or engineers not to forget the cruel gaps that appear in this lavish period of tech unicorns. He set up Nava as a public benefit corporation with the goal of counteracting the volatility seen in finance and technology today. Remember that sometimes, protesting simply means doing the work itself and resistance is a measured struggle in the long term.

Guy Standing - Humans, Labour and Technology

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 12:59:40 GMT

”Never before has debt become a systemic part of the economy - it's a system working to increase debt for you and me”

We want to revolt, but we don’t know how, Guy explains in an inspiring talk about the new social class: the precariat. So-called because of its precarious situation in-and-out of employment – it has now replaced the proletariat as the new, potentially revolutionary, class. It is born out of the global market system, which our increasingly liberal and populist leaders has set up as the most unfree system ever – paradoxically, in the name of freedom. A small elite are profiteering on rents and debts, and they want you to go further into debt.

What characterizes the new class is not only that they have to work for labour, but that they lack any occupational identity. The man or woman who can no longer say ”I am…” could be likened to a person climbing up a razorblade. A new income distribution system is not only necessary – it’s a matter of social justice.

Liam Young - A Future City

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 12:40:46 GMT

”In a smart city, virtual and real no longer apply”

Architect Liam Young presents the smart city through an audiovisual storytelling performance. Working between documentary and fiction in order to explore the possible future, he has created an eerie fictional documentary consisting of surveillance, drone and satellite footage, depicting the fears and wonders of a city in our near future. Speculating on the effects that the immersion of new digital systems will have on our urban environments, he narrates this talk about a city that operates on smart technology.

Maura Conway - Extremist communication

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 22:09:28 GMT

”There are a lot more women becoming involved in the right wing online scene at the present time”

Maura Conway, associate professor at Dublin City University, explains the ways in which extreme right movements utilize the internet to spread their ideological philosophies and set their actions in movement, trying to achieve the aims of their agenda.

We often tend to lump different kind of extreme right groups together, even though they can look very different. One key characteristic though, that they tend to have in common, is a core that aims at making fundamental changes to democratic systems and a concept of supremacism, with certain people being superior to all other and a hostility towards immigrants. Their methods on the internet consists of coding by colors, visual expressions and linguistics. The communication by these codes are supposed to maintain the already established extreme right communities which also extend in the more general parts of the internet with the objective to gain more sympathizers.

The areas of the internet where this communication is taking place have shifted over time from websites to forums, among them big communication platforms like Reddit and 4chan. A widespread perception among the general public is that extreme groups going online is something rather new. But ever since the earliest days of mainstream usage of internet a whole range of groups have turned to it for similar purposes as extreme right movements at the present day.

Maura stresses the need to ask bigger questions in order to prevent this from expanding even further which indicates not to solely focus on the technologies themselves but also on people and behavior patterns. How significant was the internet in terms of the radicalization process of these people and what content had the most profound effect?

John Willshire - Strategy is Dead - Long Live Meta-Strategy

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 22:06:35 GMT

”Strategy is dead. Design appropriately”

As the founder of strategic design unit Smithery, John V. Willshire knows the importance of planning. But how do we plan things in a chaotic world? In his talk, he questions our way of strategizing and shows us the myriad of other ways to think about it.

Willshire looks to the Internet for answers and shows us how to utilize the the different tools in their toolkit – whether it’s through different perspectives, breaking patterns or card games.

Samim A. Winiger - Generative Design

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 17:56:05 GMT

”Generative A.I. systems are making a wide range of creative skills more accessible. Radically more accessible.”

Creative.AI co-founder Samim A Winiger gives a quick introduction to creativity in relation to machine learning and AI. Today it is possible to generate virtual worlds with billions of unique planets. But how do we think about creativity and how do we build systems for it?

One example Samim gives is a music mood agent he worked on for a contemporary band. It produced 10,000 potential songs - not to circumvent the creative process but to spark inspiration. Samim believes these kinds of tools can potentially democratize style in the future. Highly complex creative arts such as font design, photography or manga can be generated automatically. Unique skills could be made more accessible through generative design.

Jessica Rosenkrantz - Generative Design

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 17:49:05 GMT

”Instead of drawing structures, we are interested in growing them”

Jessica is one half of the design studio Nervous System, who work to empower design with digital tools. They are very process based, taking inspiration from nature and its patterns. Rather than their products or materials, it is the generative design process that defines them.

By using dynamic systems that they can manipulate interactively, Jessica has created jewelry and fashion items that go far beyond the static form. Instead they aim for one-of-a-kind and user-co-created products such as a 3D-printed dress you can customize online. Jessica spends her time crafting algorithms, which she believes should not be a territory reserved for research, but diffused into everyday physical objects.

Refik Anadol - Generative Design

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 17:45:15 GMT

”What if a house is an ever-changing experience?”

In this talk, artist Refik Anadol, beautifully interweaves how the practice of art can both use technological improves and help humans contemplate over the spaces we live in. He’s reasoning if generative and parametric art can be used to find ways to make people more engaged with, and ultimately responsible for the spaces that they inhabit.

With he question ”Can public art have intelligence, memory and culture?” as a starting point he showcases how he use architecture as canvas and light as a material.

Deborah Harrison - Artificial Intelligence in Services

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 17:40:16 GMT

”Familiarity breeds comfort”

Deborah is a writer working with Microsoft’s Cortana AI, meant for common platforms like smartphones and computers. Although it has to work with many different kinds of people and language, personality is incredibly important.

Cortana has been fed only with questions written by Deborah and her team, ensuring a positive and trustful personality that is aware of being an AI. Deborah describes it as a loyal and seasoned personal assistant, and talks about how to deal with - among other things - aggression, politics and sexy talk.

The right personality assures familiarity and trust, and the accurate brand story being told. Working with AI personality, Deborah says, you’ll get to shape the standards of the future, for a business that is still in its infancy.

Maya Weinstein - Artificial Intelligence in Services

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 17:38:41 GMT

”Finding oncology treatment options for specific genetic mutations can take weeks. Watson made a diagnosis in minutes”

What difference is AI actually doing in the world today? Back in 2011, IBM’s Watson won American game show Jeopardy but a lot has happened since then. Through integration with robotics, unique products like Cognitoys’ friendly dinosaur have been created. With the open API, new services based on Watson are developed continuously.

Maya shows examples from industries as diverse as healthcare, fashion and education. The natural language processing algorithms used by Watson makes it very versatile, and ideal for software and robotics integration. During the talk you’ll hear Maya’s robot Nao tell the Conference attendees where to eat during their visit, but the same technology can also help to save lives in cancer treatment.

Elena Pedrazzani - Migration

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 17:25:40 GMT

”Migrants today need information as much as food or a doctor”

Elena Pedrazzani, Digital Communication and marketing specialist at the International Federation of Red cross and Red crescent societies, sees a need for humanitarian organizations to change the way they operate. She means that providing wifi connection and laptops in refugee camps are just as essential as providing clean water and food, since information can keep people alive.

While engaging with technology could help meet the urgent need that migrants have for someone to listen, humanitarian organizations must keep in mind not to replace human touch with technology. Being ready to listen is the only way to know that the help they provide is actually solving problems.

Dragana Kaurin - Migration

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 17:24:06 GMT

”Design with your end users, not for them”

There’s a huge communication gap when it comes to refugees and how they are treated. This leaves them vulnerable to smugglers and traffickers with information and promises they have to trust when there is no one else.

Passionate about digital communication, Dragana Kaurin, founder of Localization Lab believes that technology and social media can help development and humanitarian work to take place with the consent, understanding, and full participation of the vulnerable people it seeks to support. Technology has to replicate real-life community structures, so when not working with your end user on the development stage you’re doing it wrong.

Latoya Peterson - Migration

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 17:21:58 GMT

”When we pack refugees into this place where they just have to wait, we are forcing these people to an underground economy”

Being a refugee today means being an economic outsider; essentially living in a state of limbo. When people are forced to wait in camps, they are forced to live in a provisional economy consisting only of small trade within its borders. In many cases, these camps create the division of the digitally connected and the digitally marginalized, dividing the world into two halves.

Latoya Peterson, writer and founder of the Award-winning blog Racialicious, speaks about the digital divide and the blogging that changed her life. She urges us to speak up and ask the question of who we are including and excluding and to think of what consequences it will have for future generations.

Interview: Fernanda Saboia - Andreas Ekström

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 16:44:55 GMT

Interview: Fernanda Saboia - Andreas Ekström

Martin Hoffmann - One to one - a new mode of communication,

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 16:31:38 GMT

”The next big job in digital journalism is the copywriter… Who else should feed your bots?”

Are chat bots and conversational journalism really the future? Many have tried, but few have actually made those features work. Martin Hoffman from ConvJournalism knows how to create conversational journalism worth talking about.

With messaging apps, news outlets might just reach an audience that doesn’t read the magazine. Martin shows how conversational journalism can invent new forms of storytelling and, in turn, change the media landscape as we know it.

Fernanda Saboia - One to One - A New Mode of Communication

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 16:03:10 GMT

”Messaging has an analog precedent. Social media doesn't”

Why have messaging apps surpassed social media in active users? That is the question that Fernanda Saboia, Senior Product Strategist at Huge, asks. The answer lies in response rate, privacy, and micro communities, among other things.

Fernanda explains WhatsApp’s success in Brazil, talks about the future of commerce and what companies can do to reach people in secluded channels.

Clive Thompson - Hacking Minecraft

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 15:59:05 GMT

”Cultural change can never come from above, it comes when the conditions are right”

With our time’s closed computers, where tinkering and tweaking isn’t possible, where do kids go to create in the digital world? A few generations ago there was Commodore 64, so what’s our times contribution to help youth deep dive into the world of computers?

In Hacking Minecraft Clive Thompson talk about how a blocky videogame is creating a generation of kids fluent in design and programming. They are even creating civics of online life, and abiding them. Any culture that is open encourages this type of creating, that is why they’re vital.

Michael Krona - Extremist communication

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 15:26:15 GMT

”The Islamic State are more pragmatic than previous groups”

Extremist Groups are growing. Terror attacks are taking place all over the world, spreading a fear that is changing our society. Extremist groups have proven the effectivity and success of their marketing and recruitment techniques many times over, using tools that we know well.

Michael Krona, Senior lecturer and researcher at Malmö University, has spent the last two years researching the propaganda of the terror organization ISIS. He explains the two main stories being told by ISIS through their propaganda; the story of a well functioning, harmonic caliphate, depicting peaceful social life and playing children, and the heroism of being a fighter, glorifying the role of the militant soldier. The narration of extreme violence that our mainstream media channels frequently report about is only 3 % of the propaganda ISIS is transmitting online.

In order to counter this type of propaganda, he argues that more interdisciplinary research is needed and that a deeper understanding of the people being affected by the propaganda is key.

Toby Shapshak - Global Outlook

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 13:49:46 GMT

”Innovation is better in Africa since it comes out of necessity”

An increasing African middle class is ensuring the steady economic growth of a whole continent. In places where there is neither electricity nor running water, mobile payment is more frequently used than anywhere else in the world. This and many other developments owes to the technology being created, adapted and used to meet the unique needs of the African people.

Toby Shapshak, editor-in-chief of Stuff Magazine, means that innovation in its purest form comes out of necessity. In his talk, he introduces us to Africa’s innovation spirit.

Jemma Xu - Global Outlook

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 13:48:30 GMT

”WeChat: you could live in China using nothing else”

In China, the mentality of start-ups is all or nothing. As a start-up, you will have to decide whether to focus on China or the rest of the world - you simply can’t do both. The cultural difference is too vast.

Jemma Xu is the CEO and co-founder of the Australia-based travel company Tripalocal. In this talk she shares her experiences of the current major tech trends and the segmentation of the Chinese market, as well as how to innovate chinese style.

Nazanin Daneshvar - Global Outlook

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 13:47:02 GMT

”In 2013 Iran had the highest rise on entrepreneurship in the world”

When Iranian Entrepreneur Nazanin Daneshvar founded her company Takhfifan, there wasn’t anything around to compare with. As a female manager, in the beginning, she had to bring her dad for people to take her seriously. Fortunately things are happening in Iran. There’s a growing number of startups and success companies as well as a huge rise in Internet usage.

In this talk Nazanin speaks of the environment revolving start-ups in Iran, her journey and how she started a successful company with the help of the locals.

Hey Elbow

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 11:16:25 GMT

Hey Elbow introduces The Conference

Tricia Wang - Don't Trust The Truth

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 11:16:25 GMT

”We don’t have a hardware problem, we have a socialware problem”

Global technology ethnographer Tricia Wang emphasizes the inherent risks in thinking of the existence of absolute truths. She compares modern digital technology with mediums from previous historical contexts, and how the conviction to convey an objective version of the world with the help of these mediums inevitably make us believe that this representation of the world reflects its true character.

We like to think of technology as something that will help us to make better sense of the world more effectively, but Tricia argues that it instead often makes things less clear. This gets even more troublesome when we tend to rely on the technology to bring the world to us without experience it in its natural form. We need to ask ourselves who it is that gets to construct this truth and from what perspective.

The lack of different perspectives in technological development risk to create a one-sided representation that, intentionally or unintentionally, neglects the diversity of our world and the communities within. When companies set up algorithms or other more autonomous technical solutions, the design in many cases is a progeny of their own singular perspective which can lead to unfortunate consequences.

Tricia also discusses virtual reality and the way that we like to put a great amount of faith to it in order to make us more empathetic with its attributes to include multiple perspectives in a single technology. Still its creator has to decide what’s worthy to film and from which perspective. This could potentially lead to what Tricia labels as perspective collision, when the things we design get used in such ways that it reveals the limited perspective of the designers themselves. Instead, companies should strive to adopt a perspective shift, the ability to see the world from another point of view, essentially empathy.

Throughout history, art have generated, and generating, vastly different perspectives of reality which companies need to contemplate more on how to integrate in different aspects of their work. Only half the dream of a global village has come true, the technical part. The social part is lacking.