Monday 10 March 2014

Brainstorming the future - The future for the new digital age - Brighton 6 March 2014

JEB, (Junior Enterprise Brighton) ,organised and ran Brainstorming the future for the new digital age at Brighton University .  JEB is entirely managed by students who engage in projects such as professional consultancy to SME's, events management and charity fundraising. And for the event they secured a great trio of speakers: Aral Balkan, Rory Sutherland and Tom Warner. 

Things I have bought back to the office from Aral's presentation are below. 

Aral Balkan
-Facebook can see when a relationship is over - they have developed an algorithm that detects behaviors of a couple that are splitting up.

Everything is always on - we are always connected to the internet. 

Facebook, Twitter and Google share a 'free' business model. We don't pay to use them but they do take data from us. The end game is all about owning the connectivity - if they own connectivity it doesn't matter what device we use or where we are - our data is with them. They need data to survive and we share everything.

Information offices around the world use Google to supply information to them - it is cheaper and easier than trying to collate that data themselves.


The CEO of Google Eric Schmidt said 'If you have something you don't want anyone to know maybe you shouldn't be doing it.' (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/07/google-ceo-on-privacy-if_n_383105.html) 


So nothing is private - Aral believes that 'Privacy is having control of what you want to keep to yourself and what you want to share'


But - if you want to opt out it is ridiculously hard - there are not any viable options for anyone other than the really tech savy. 


Aral and his crew are developing an Indie phone -it was launched at the met conference last year. You can find out a little about it at http://indiephone.eu/ and you can see Aral's talk Digital Feudalism and how to avoid it  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1QCBzQ0aNc&feature=youtu.be&t=43s


It was a really thought-provoking talk - big thank you to Aral and JEB for speaking to us.




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