Re-Radicalising the Knowledge Pioneers

I was delighted to provide a keynote for the Dutch research funding organization NWO, focused on the role we adopt in science as public intellectuals. It was as much a call to action, as a statement about the value of being publicly present as an academic.

My main point was that our absence from public life leaves the world vulnerable to those for whom information serves simply to reinforce their power and the independent academic is a crucial component of democracy.

Luckily, we have a lot of really remarkable scholars who are taking up this challenge and occupying the role of public intellectual. So, we have a lot to be optimistic. A key factor though, will be for us all to remain digitally agile, so that we can cut through the noise of digital media, but also make the most of the latest platforms that are available.

Science Communication in Times of Global Catastrophic Risk

I was delighted to give a talk to staff and students at the Natural History Musuem in January, as part of their SciFi series. The talk focused on identifying urgent considerations in a climate of uncertainty around a number of major, global transformations.

I kicked off the talk by discussing the importance of utlising creative, digital technologies to put science where it can reach people, showing the game Ark: Survival Evolved as a great example of how dinosaur knowledge can be found. We quickly then turned to transhumanism as a critical re-framing of the climate emergency, so as to encompass a range of other global catastrophic risks. In doing so, we re-imagine the problem at hand and achieve a clearer sense of the totality of the risks we face and what’s needed to address these concerns.

Future of Sport

It was really great to speak at Pro Manchester’s Future of Sport event, alongside my colleague Dr Maria Stukoff. We got into a lot of stuff, but most fun was talking about virtual reality and sports.

I think a lot of people wonder whether VR will go the same way as 3D, but it’s worth remembering that VR is still a developmental technology. Design glitches are getting fixed, new platforms are emerging to make a more comfortable experience and a lot of the people working within this space are really excited by the capacity to make the world more accessible by creating VR experiences of it. I know people who are creating VR interactives of the natural world, which are amazing. There’s a great everest video which gets into the waste left by climbers and how it gets cleaned up.

There’s so much around using VR for good and the health benefits of its integration with sports are vast. So, it may be a bumpy ride, but I think it’s likely that VR - or XR experiences - has reached a critical point in its history where it’s going to become a bigger part of everything we do.

Esports at the Lausanne 2020 Youth Olympic Games

Just back from the Lausanne YOG and what a whirlwind it has been. Most noticeable was the presence of esports, which included a dedicated zone in a building, as part of the cultural programme, along with some tournaments, conferences, a retro-gaming exhibition, and big stage demos.

What was particularly compelling about the presence of esports was the promotion of Swiss Made Games - nurturing the game developer community and putting them in closer contact with players. I had the chance to speak to a young player, Neo, who was a fantastic ambassador for the Swiss Esports Federation.

Very grateful to those walked me through the content.

Esports for Peace

Just before the summer, I was in Monaco giving a talk about how esports can contribute to peace processes. The event brought together many world leading athletes who have broken records for many years and it was great to have a chance to talk about the potential of esports for social good.

This will be worked up into a longer paper, but I’m passionate about the idea that esports can be a pipeline for all kinds of valuable social functions, from building greater innovation, to developing infrastructure, creativity, and community. These elements draw on the idea that digital rights are becoming a more crucial part of our world.

Esports and Virtual Reality

I recently interview for Ubeat, a Spanish esports OTT platform, which featured a film on the relationship between sports and esports. I spoke about the growing range of immersive experiences that are developing around the esports world and how these are beginning to approximate the kinds of things we do in sports.

We can draw a long line of interest in such forms of gaming from Dance Revolution to Nintendo Wii and to Pokemon Go. Bringing physical activity closer to the gaming space is one of my key areas of focus for the next couple of years and it’s such a compelling proposition, as we move into a world that is increasingly anxious about sedentary lifestyles and excessive mobile phone usage,

Here’s the video! And thanks to Emma, who set up the opportunity and produced the content, and to David and the team at Salford University for shooting the film for me during our Virtual Reality Fitness Marathon.

Check out our wider esports work over at Esports Science Insights.

Virtual Reality Fitness

Last week, we ran a Virtual Reality Fitness Marathon as part of our Creative Entrepreneurs day at the University of Salford, which focused on esports. It was a day for bringing people together across a range of disciplines within the university, from health, business, art, science, and digital, to explore the synergy between gaming and physical activity.

Here’s a wider piece on the topic I wrote recently.

"This week, I joined the British Esports Association Advisory Board!"

I am very proud to be joining the board of the British Esports Association this year, along with my colleague at Salford, Dr Maria Stukoff..

I’ve been in dialogue with BEA since 2016, when I met Chester King during the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. He was there producing what must surely be the first esports event to take place during the Olympic Games, and was suitably embedded within British House.

Since then, we’ve met all over the world to talk about the development of esports and BEA is really leading the world in terms of its values, concern about the importance of esports for social and personal development and I’m really looking forward to working more closely with them

Esports is the future of all sports – here’s why

Delighted to have another article published in The Conversation, focused on esports and the prospects of virtual reality. Take a peek here

Are you TikTok Ready?

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been diving into TikTok, lecturing about it, writing, and trying to figure out what space there is for scholars to be present. It’s not a simple one to solve, but I think we need to understand how the consumption of media content is changing and so I put this at the heart of this article for the Times Higher. More writing on this to follow, but here’s the link to the article.

Esports Science Insights

I am very excited to share our new Esports research platform, which takes research findings from the academic literature and digests them into accessible insights for the industry. We’re now making informal inquiries to colleagues around the world to work as sub-editors for disciplines, so if this is something you’d like to do, then please drop me a line.

Level Up Human

Great to have recorded this episode with the Level Up Human crew and the amazing Sarah Withers from Salford.

Altmetric Annual Conference

Last week, I spoke at the Altmetrics conference on how we may think about our role as scientists, not as professionals, but as citizens. Here’s what I said.

Virtual Reality and Esports

In Barcelona, I gave an opening keynote on Emerging Realities in Esports, for the Esports Regulatory Congress. Within the talk, I spoke about how new kinds of immersive realities are emerging that are changing how we define and play esports. Here’s a nice example…

The programme of work in esports that we are growing at Salford University is really exciting and the students are so switched on to what’s changing around our media culture. It’s a really exciting time to be working within this space, especially given the wide ranging of policy issues it engages where I think we can make a contribution.

Good Science Begins with Communication

Great to have been in Switzerland for the annual Science Comm conference. So many great people working hard to communicate fantastic research. Here’s a link to my talk, broadcast on Facebook Live.

Getting started at #ScienceComm19

Posted by Andy Miah on Friday, 20 September 2019

News Media Coalition

Last week, I was in Berlin speaking about emerging media technologies at the News Media Coalition annual meeting. It was great to be facilitating a conversation with young journalists about how they see the state of the industry, especially as one of them is part of the current Young Reporters cohort of the International Olympic Committee. It took be back to my role as mentor some years ago in what has to be one of the most remarkable experiences a person can get in sports reporting training.

My talk focused on artificial intelligence, virtual reality, drones, and esports, while examining the state of an industry that desperately needs to find a way to reposition itself around the technology innovation community that now underpins our media culture. How can news outlets best protect themselves? Be that innovation community and ensure ownership of change is retained.

The Journal of Future Robot Life

I am very pleased to share my involvement with this new journal, for which I will join its inaugural Editorial Board. Here’s an overview of what it will cover

What will robots be like ten, twenty and more years from now? What will they be able to accomplish? How will human–robot relationships have advanced? What place in society will be occupied by robots? These are just some of the questions which will be debated in the pages of this new publication – the Journal of Future Robot Life.

Computer science and artificial intelligence (AI) have had a huge impact on society, an impact that will only increase with further advances in hardware and software technologies. Robots are the most remarkable product of these developments in computing and AI, many of them being designed in a humanlike form and endowed with humanlike capabilities: talking, hearing, seeing, moving and performing complex tasks such as dancing, conducting an orchestra, rescuing victims at disaster sites, playing musical instruments, and beating a world champion at chess.

As robots become more humanlike in their appearance and their capabilities, and as they come to be regarded more and more as our companions and assistants in all aspects of daily life, different questions beg to be answered. We need to contemplate what life will be like when robots can imitate human behavior sufficiently to be regarded, in some sense, as our equals. And when we humans have adapted our ways of life in order to interact fully with robots as alternative people, and to benefit fully from our relationships with them, such questions on the future of human–robot interactions and human–robot relationships are the raison d’etre of this journal. What civil rights and legal rights should robots be granted? What are the ethics of humankind’s interactions with robots? Will robots have empathy? Will their personalities and emotions mimic our own? Will robots be programmed with social intelligence, or can they acquire it through a learning process? Will robots be alive in any humanlike sense, and if so, how?

The Journal of Future Robot Life will attempt to answer these questions and many more. The topics which we group under the umbrella phrase “future robot life” are many and varied, and the list will doubtless expand with time. We shall start with the following:

Animal–robot interfaces
Are robots alive?
Biological behaviors
Companion robots
Evolutionary robots
Human–robot reproduction
Human–robot interfaces
Implanted cyborg technologies
Laws relating to robots
Nanorobots in medicine
Plant–robot interfaces
Robot emotions
Robot ethics
Robot personalities
Robot reproduction
Robot rights
Robot–human parents
Robots as doctors
Robots as economists
Robots as lovers
Robots as politicians
Robots as psychiatrists/therapists
Robots as spouses
Robots as teachers
Robots in Entertainment
Robots in government
Robots on the battlefield
Social intelligence in robots
Swarm robot behavior.

Once of the nicest discussions about robots I’ve been involved with was a Tomorrow’s Live World event, which took place within the Manchester Science Festival programme of 2018. Here’s what that was like.

One of the nicest science communication events I’ve ever produced focused on inter-generational conversations about the future of robotics, which featured as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science. Here’s a glimpse into what we did.

What is Transhumanism ?

Great to see this article in The Week focus on a subject close to my heart. Hard to believe I’ve been writing about this for 20 years now. So much has happened over that period and this article captures a number of the crucial viewpoints across this subject.

Transhumanism @ BlueDot Festival

It was fantastic to be at Bluedot again this week, alongside Tom Shakespeare. I’ve known Tom for over a decade now and it’s always such a delight to be in his company. One of the rare academics who can use comedy within public talks to great effect.

Our discussion took us deep into the realm of transhumanism and spanned such areas as artistic practice and elite sport. I tend to be pretty liberal in how we approach this subject, not hell bent on humans having to embrace all technologies, but having the opportunity to do so. This means being allowed to choose a life that minimises the experience of biological suffering, while also transcending our species typical functions, notably the duration of our life span.

We didn’t record that day, but here’s something that captures much of my perspective on this subject. It’s one of my favourite articles from a few years ago.

Sadly, I was only at Blue Dot for the day, but the real highlight was catching Rebecca Taylor perform, just before my session.

DRONES @ Microdot

Last month, i was really delighted to take part in the Bluedot Microdot event in central Manchester at which I spoke about my forthcoming book, DRONES: The Brilliant, The Bad, and The Beautiful, to be published by Emerald in 2020. It was a fantastic vibe at the event, feeling very much like a mini Bluedot. Here’s a sneak peak into some of the content from the book