APF Oceania Fireside Chat #11 - Reassessing the IT Revolution with Richard Slaughter
Wed, Jul 09
|Zoom
Time & Location
Jul 09, 2025, 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM GMT+10
Zoom
Guests
About the Event
About the Session:
This is the title of a project that, in its initial form, ran from 2018 to 2024. Its conclusions were progressively published in Futures and, more recently, in the APF journal, Compass. It was prompted by the growing realisation that this particular ‘revolution’ was not merely failing to achieve the positive outcomes that had been promised, it was creating quite new risks, dangers and existential threats for which humanity was ill-prepared. They include the near loss of privacy, new forms of ‘asymmetrical’ warfare, ruthless exploitation of civilian populations by internet oligarchs, and, finally, the rise of so-called ‘AI’; and the near-complete colonisation of the internet by rogue actors including organised crime. As one observer recently noted:
"When most of us think of e-crimes we think of money laundering and global scammers who send millions of emails to hook the vulnerable. But the internet has become the single greatest weapon in the criminal world." - John Silvester, Fighting Against Online Predators, The Age, June 14, 2025
In this session we will visit these issues briefly and consider ways in which Futurists and others can respond.
It is highly recommended that participants review the free ePub Deleting Dystopia prior to the session. It provides a succinct account of how we collectively reached this point.
Optional reading: Human agency and the technoscientific dilemma: Contesting the role of technology in shaping our collective futures