Events
Zucked: Waking up to the Facebook catastrophe
If you had told Roger McNamee three years ago that he would soon be devoting himself to stopping Facebook from destroying democracy, he would have howled with laughter. He had mentored many tech leaders in his illustrious career as an investor, but few things had made him prouder, or been better for his fund’s bottom line, than his early service to Mark Zuckerberg.
Zucked is McNamee’s intimate reckoning with the catastrophic failure of the head of one of the world’s most powerful companies to face up to the damage he is doing. It’s a story that begins with a series of rude awakenings. First there is the author’s dawning realization that the platform is being manipulated by some very bad actors. Then there is the even more unsettling realization that Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are unable or unwilling to share his concerns, polite as they may be to his face.
And then comes Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, and the emergence of one horrific piece of news after another about the malign ends to which the Facebook platform has been put.
Allan Ponniah of Facesoft
Stories about facial recognition, and what this means for society, are appearing everywhere these days.
Join us for a breakfast with the founder and CEO of Facesoft, one of the most advanced facial recognition companies in the world, to learn about where we are with the technology. What is technologically possible? What might be possible in the future? And what are the use cases?
Jeni Tennison, CEO of the Open Data Institute
Data is a new form of infrastructure. Our economies and societies are coming to rely on data, but it is also an emerging battlefield where public interest, individual preference and corporate avarice seem poised to clash.
Massive volumes of data are being generated and processed every day. The data revolution is happening quickly, driving more informed policy making, scientific discovery and business innovation. But there is growing public awareness and concern about how data is collected, used, shared and monetised. How do we get from where we are now to where we might want to be, given the power that access to data confers?
Join Jeni Tennison of the Open Data Institute to learn about why access to data is so important and about the new kinds of institutions that could help ensure that data works in ways that are worthy of our trust.
David Shrier - futurist, author, entrepreneur
Consumers have unwittingly given over their personal information to an array of private sector aggregators such as Facebook and credit rating agency, Experian. The vulnerabilities this has created have shifted the course of western democracy. But new movements are arising to let people reclaim control of their personal data. What does this potential future look like? What are the possibilities it contains?
Past Events
Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief, Head of Economics and Politics, Contributing Editor, Global Business Columnist
What to expect from the US election and the new UK Government
Artist
Patricia Swannell: A Commemorative Exhibition
