Eva Pascoe came and gave us some insights particularly into recent uses of Virtual and Augmented Realities in retail.

Discussions afterwards included:

• Do we need physical body to commune with others?
• AR/VR very different
• How immersive does the reality have to be to be virtual?
• How will we avoid aggravating the Digital Divide?  (ie that those who do not have the technology access to the technology become left behind. VR on NHS?
• (Virtually) When tomorrow is as immersive as today, how will we know what is real?
• Getting Lost
• Learning to see our hands in VR.  VR adapting to us.  Embodiment & VR
• How do you know you are not in VR now?!
• Will we be able to interact with other real things in the virtual way? If so what does that mean for our future?
• The visual/sound bias – not immersion for physical beings until touch, smell, taste?

At all of these sessions, we’ve ended in a circle asking people to record their reflections.  Listening to this should give you a better feel of what it was like in the room.

If you were there and have written about the experience, do let me know.

Priya Prakash from Design for Social Change came along to our third Future of Work event at Truphone to talk about how work might change when some of our colleagues are a network of sensing machines talking to each other.

Discussions that followed included:

• IoT: Main uses in the next 10 years
• Knowledge Management & Human to Human Interaction
• What makes us human? What is human?
• So what do *you* think will be the impact of IoT on the future of work?
• Where are the lines between living & working?
• What’s the future of design in this context?

At all of these sessions, we’ve ended in a circle asking people to record their reflections.  Listening to this should give you a better feel of what it was like in the room.

If you’ve written something about the evening or inspired by your conversations, do let me know.

We started the second Future of Work event with an introduction to Mycelia from Imogen Heap.  If you haven’t read it yet, the two-part interview she did on Forbes is a great starting point.  In a nutshell, she calls it “Fairtrade for musicians”  it’s intended to be a way of using smart contracts on the blockchain to manage metadata about an artist’s works (including that important metadata about price and how money gets distributed after each sale).

The discussions afterwards included:

• Blockchain as a method of trust
• How do we make Mycelia a foundation & make money for itself?
• Autonomy embedded
• Money creation on the blockchain
• Beacon Music App
• Mobile Blockchain
• Does Technology democratize or amplify differences in Human Power Relationships?
• Crowdsourced Artistic Market?
• What is the Finance Industry?
• Scaling and Sequestration
• Distributed Identity
• UI & UX How do we interact with the blockchain. Author User
• Devising Gaming Mechanics on the block chain (Educational)
• The Musician Development Bank
• Fair Trade Music Light!
• What is the overhead of running a blockchain system to record all, say FX transactions or all music plays

We finish each evening with a circle where we pass around an audio recorder to capture people’s immediate reactions.  Have a listen to get more of a feel for what it was like in the room.

If you were there and have written anything about the evening or inspired by your conversations, please do let me know so I can spread the word.

This was the first of a series of evenings at Truphone looking at the future of work in the context of four currently maturing technologies.  We started off with a focus on Artificial Intelligence and were given a great overview by Benjamin Ellis of Redcatco.

Discussions that followed included:

• What happens when the AI is wrong?
  Social Machines (where/how/what)
• The social acceptability of AI decisions, even if they are better than human ones
• I want IRON MAN’s suit!
• AI & Regulation Self/Gov
• Are we driving AI… or does it drive us?
• Why AI? Are we creating stuff because we can or because it adds to the human condition or…?
• UIs How do we talk to them and them to us? How do they sell their ideas? Spectrum from Sound Hound to C3PO to HAL
• If a machine/AI does something bad (kills someone) who is responsible? The owner, the manufacturer, the programmer or the victim?
• What will we be using AI for in the next few years? What can I use it for now?
• Is AI artificial ie not human?

We finish each evening with a circle where we pass around an audio recorder to capture people’s immediate reactions.  Have a listen to get more of a feel for what it was like in the room.

David Terrar did a write up for the Agile Elephant Blog.  If you were there and have written anything yourself, do let me know and I’ll add a link.

Last Thursday, we kicked off a series of evenings at the offices of Truphone with James Tagg leading a romp through the current thinking about the future of artificial intelligence in the context of mobile, ie “When will your smartphone be smarter than you?”

We then went into a short open space session with people suggesting conversations about “How & when the laws of robotics will apply to smartphone AIs”, “How can AI be used for creating world peace?” and “What does the AI world really look like in 2025?”

I managed to catch a few snippets of the conversations:

The format worked well, here’s audio of the final circle (a sentence or two from everyone who wants to) many people said it was very refreshing and stimulating to have a chance to talk about what they wanted to talk about while also having plenty of time to quiz James.  Last night we returned to Artificial Intelligence again, but this time, helped by Benjamin Ellis, looking through the lens of the Future of Work (which is the overall theme for the four remaining sessions) and after that come Blockchain, Drones Robots & IoT and Virtual/Augmented Realities. Do join us!

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I’ve dropped in to the Ethereum Devcon1 at the Gibson Hall, slap bang in the middle of the City – at the junction of Threadneedle Street and Bishopsgate.  And Vinay and I sat in a marquee on the lawn (how surreal was your morning?) until we reckoned it would be more comfortable in the “Black Bar”.  I’m there now.  I ducked out of the session on “Monads and Comonads”. Because.

I’m mostly interested in the social and economic effects of blockchain tech especially the coming wave of white collar automation, so please piing me if you’re here and want to have a chat.  i’m not on-site all day every day but I will be dropping by regularly.

As well as the sessions in Leeds, Helen and I are organising a series of events on the Future of Work and emerging technologies with our friend James Tagg of Truphone (his was the farm where we did Hacklands).

The subjects are the four areas that we’re focusing on at Tuttle these days with an emphasis on how they’re changing the world of work:

Artificial Intelligence – 10th November
Blockchains – 19th November
Drones Robots and the Internet of Things – 24th November
Virtual & Augmented Realities – 1st December

All the events are happening at the Truphone offices on 21st Floor of 25 Canada Square and since the clocks will have gone back by then, you’ll see the night-time version of the view of Docklands and beyond.

However, it is the conversation you will come for!  We’ll have a couple of contributions to kick things off at 6pm but then we’ll get into Open Space and you get to talk about what interests you.  Here’s some more blurb:

“Our relationship with work and technology is complicated.  We strive to reduce the difficulty and danger of work for people, but we want to keep our jobs-based economy.  For many people, work gives meaning to their lives and yet they hate their job.

In this series, we’ll be looking at the gap between advances in technology and our social capacity to deal with them, especially in the context of how work is changing.”

Also if you’re interested in this stuff, but not already a member of the Tuttle Group on Facebook, you should join.

People of the North!  I’m going to be holding three, short(ish), daytime Open Space sessions in Leeds in the first week of November as part of a series of events organised by Helen Keegan and Heroes of the Mobile Fringe.

Come along and talk about the future!

The sessions (more details of each on their booking pages) are:

Future of Work
“How will you survive and thrive in the future of work?”
Tuesday 3rd Nov 10.00-12.30

Future of Mobile (inc. a talk from James Tagg of Truphone)
“What does the future of mobile hold for us?”
Wednesday 4th Nov 10.00-12.30

Future of Mobile Advertising (with Helen Keegan)
“What does the future of mobile advertising look like?”
Wednesday 4th Nov 15.00-17.30

All the events are at

aql Salem Bar
11-15 Hunslet Road
LS10 1JQ Leeds

If you can’t make daytime, but would like to say hello, come to Swedish Beers on the Tuesday night.