We now rely heavily on Internet technologies to plan, coordinate and respond to emergencies. There can be catastrophic consequences when connections fail. How could the technology to evolve to reduce the likelihood that this will happen? How could we adapt if over time the service of the Internet degraded? We invite you to join us and bring our combined expertise to on questions like these and come up with some innovative answers. The aim of the workshop is to present our individual speculative future scenarios and together work through their implication for a report to be sent to government and community decision and policy makers.
SInet Workshop
October 3 2014 10:30am to 4pm
AHSRI training room, Innovation Campus
Background
Look back a decade or two or three and can you remember life without social media, intelligent mobile devices, the Internet and email? Before we realised it, each of these revolutionary developments became part of our lives with impacts that few people had anticipated. We have in the main adapted to each wave of new capability only as it came upon us and we experienced it.
Many of us could plan with a lot more certainty if we knew what the next digital revolution will be and what it will enable us to do. Will the functionality and global connection continue to grow and become more ubiquitous and powerful? Or will there be a tipping point that takes a completely new direction? How can we best prepare to embrace what comes next?
A huge amount of research has been reported over the years on the effects of each new wave of technologies but only looking back to what has already happened. Some of us who have been in this game for decades have some knowledge on which to base predictions of the future. Although we may come up with different future scenarios it could be productive to compare these, work through their implications and speculate on the planning necessary to respond in beneficial ways.
Plans for the workshop
On October 3, 2014 we plan to bring together researchers, practitioners, policy and decision makers to share ideas, brainstorm and formulate responses to possible future scenarios that will affect decision makers in community planning, local and state governments’ emergency and disaster management, and adaption to the consequence of climate change.
We will be fortunate to have a visit from Prof Bonnie Nardi from the University of California, Irvine. Bonnie is an anthropologist and internationally respected expert in the way digital technologies emerge and impact our lives. She will talk about her prediction that one possible future could involve collapse informatics where, either over time or due to a sudden catastrophic event, the rich communications and coordination we now enjoy on the Internet may severely degrade. Other researchers will present contrasting scenarios where we are able to use mobile, interconnected digital technologies to greatly expand what we can do now.
Outputs
A report to government and relevant organisations and follow up meetings.