“I’LL BE BACK…” - MAR 27 - 3.53PM

Megatech: Technology in 2050, Luciano Floridi, Daniel Franklin

The future... Difficult to predict? Especially now? Well yes, but frankly no different really to how the world responded to the invention of the telegraph, the radio or television (or going way back even further, the wheel). At least that's what Luciano Floridi, professor of philosophy and - wait for it - ethics of information at the Oxford Internet Institute believes. And boy is he cool. In conversation with Daniel Franklin, 'Economist' executive editor, the two debated the prospects of just where technology will take us by the year 2050. And 'wow!' was it fascinating. To the point in fact where I could have happily sat there for the rest of the day (although with no disrespect to Mr Franklin, it was Floridi who actually held the audience captive). Surprisingly a more elderly audience (one person only admitted to having been alive since email) it was far less doom and gloom than one might have been expected. In fact, according to Floridi, a lot of our more popular concerns about the future (zombie apocalypse being, clearly, the most extreme) are unfounded and that, just like the birth of television, our current digital fast track to Artificial Intelligence and beyond will mould itself to our needs as much as its own. Reassuring for those who take the 'Terminator' films so seriously.