Well this was an absolutely phenomenal event! Over 1500 households registered for the event and you can watch back my presentation on the TEDx platform here.
I've really fallen behind on updating my website, so I'm going to blitz through the last 3 months!
Way back in March, I gave a talk for the doctoral school of the University of Lausanne about ethics and xr sports. It was a great way to think through some new ideas and you can find the entire session here.
A talk for the Global Alliance for Responsible AI
As part of the Scottish Parliament evidence session, my contribution focused on how we evaluate government communications during the pandemic. It’s a notoriously difficult subject, as there are so many moving pieces. However, there really ought to be some way to reflect on the effectiveness of the communications strategies and to establish comparators across nations.
The final report from the Scottish Parliament session covers a lot of levers for Scotland’s recovery and you can read the full scope of these here
A few weeks ago, I was interviewed for an article in the Washington Post, written by Nick Busca, who does fantastic work writing about new technology. You can access the article here (hopefully!)
Global Sports Week took place last week, led out of Paris, France. I gave a Masterclass on Esports and, while so much was online, a huge amount of activity tool place. Here’s a bit about how it felt.
I was really honoured to be part of a session organized by the Scottish Parliament to advise the Scottish Government on their public communication strategy. The session was a really good opportunity to think about how we evaluate government communications, especially in times of urgent need for clear messaging and quick public reactions. I hope this may develop into some further research on the subject and may well need some international collaborators to get it done.
I was really honoured to take part in the inaugural esports education programme hosted by LDNUTD, a fantastic esports team in London. Reaching out to young esports players in London, the sessions covered all aspects of becoming an esports professional. I was really pleased to speak to school kids and beyond about how to think through developing a public speaking presence in the esports world. Here’s a bit of what we covered.
I was delighted to speak about Extraterrestrial Ethics this month for #BNW2020, a fantastic event, which brought together artists, philosophers, scientists, and engineers to think through some of the biggest problems we face.
My talk on ET Ethics gets into an expanded definition of alien life forms that takes into account the new biology we are creating through synthetic biology and the likelihood that our evolution may take place outside of planet Earth!
More on that later!
Earlier this month, the British Esports Association produced the Esports Education Summit, in partnership with Pearson Education. I was delighted to speak in a session with Dr Maria Stukoff, as host.
We covered career paths in esports, from how STEM subjects are really benefitting from the esports pathway to the creative work involved in designing increasingly immersive experiences in esports.
These are remarkable times and I was very pleased to have the chance to speak with people from the STFC and UKRI community about the importance of science communication. Here’s the re-run.
I’m really excited to announce my involvement with a remarkable new tv series titled “Man 2.0” Across a number of episodes, I talk about how the human condition is being transformed by technology and what this means for our future. It’s currently being distributed worldwide, so may not yet be in your country, but you can see a trailer here.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve launched a new, personal podcast, focused on the research I do. You can access it through all good providers! Sign up here The first episodes examine far ranging issues in transhumanism, science, and emerging technologies.
Today, took part in an event produced by the Manchester organizations Future Everything and MIDAS, focused on discussions about ethics and digital technology. You can view the whole session here.
I was delighted to take part in the week-long Pint of Science programme this week, especially as our event covered one of my favourite subjects - gaming. In my slot, i cover how Salford’s Game Lab inspired collaboration and why gaming is a great way to develop enthusiasm for learning. Here’s the video:
I am really delighted to be virtually in Taiwan this week, speaking at their National Olympic Academy about the relationship between ‘Sport, Health and the Environment. I get into everything from nanotechnology to virtual reality to discuss how an appreciation for planetary health must guide everything we do and the sense we make of human actions in a fragile and vulnerable world. I’m really pleased to make this available more widely on YouTube.
Great to see this write up from our AI for Good event last week. An excellent summary of what we covered.
I was delighted to be a part of this BBC radio programme, especially since my dear friend Dr Mahfoud Amara is also interviews.
Why is watching sport so important to us as a species? And what happens when that experience is taken away from us? Award-winning sports journalist and broadcaster Clare Balding explores why sport plays such a crucial role in shaping society, speaking to a field of global experts and elite sportspeople, including Martina Navratilova.
In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic abruptly put a stop to virtually all sporting activity across the globe – and left vast numbers of people staring into an existential void. In sport’s absence, we’ve been hungrily reliving past contests, debating hypothetical scenarios, and doing everything we can to plug the hole in our lives. The crisis has shown how our relationship with sport dominates our lives and our media, our conversations and our leisure time. In this documentary, Clare Balding talks to figures from the worlds of anthropology, philosophy and human behaviour to try to figure out why experiencing sport is so meaningful to us, whether we’re in a crowd, or one of millions following on television and social media.
Her interviewees include the sociologists Akilah Carter-Francique, Mahfoud Amara and Ramachandra Guha; anthropologist Leila Zaki Chakravarty; and philosophers Heather Reid and Andy Martin – who unpick the myriad ways in which our love of sport is deeply embedded in human experience and history, and how our consumption of it has shaped modern society.
Cognitive neuroscientist Sophie Scott reveals what we know about what happens in our brains as we watch sport, whilst bioethicist and technology expert Andy Miah tells Clare how cutting-edge digital advances and the new world of eSports are changing the relationship between fan and sporting event forever.
An Overcoat Media Production for BBC World Service. Produced by Steven Rajam Photo: Liverpool fans at Anfield, Credit: Tembele Bohle, Pexels
It was an absolute pleasure to be involved with an event this week run by the Tokyo 2020 Director of International Communications Tatsuo Ogura, who took time out of his role to produce an independent, charity liveathon about all things digital and sport. For 24hours speakers from all over the world covered a range of topics in an event he wants to become the SXSW of Japan.
My session takes you through the last 20 years of digital innovation, which leads up to how esports are changing the conversation about creativity, culture, and content. You can watch it back here
This week, I took part in an event led by the United Nations agency ITU and the Global Esports Federation, examining points of intersection between artificial intelligence and esports. Other panelists included Ursula Romero, Chris Overholt, Chong Geng Ng, Bryn Balcombe, and our host was the amazing LJ Rich. We covered a wide range of subjects from how esports integration with AI is driving ground breaking research and the possibility that AI may just save the world from a range of catastrophic risks.
Currently working on a full article to examine these areas, so stay tuned! Meanwhile, here’s the recording from yesterday.