Dr Michael Smyth - Welcome to the Algorithmic Age - From Life Between Buildings to Life Between Systems

Skeptics on the Fringe presents:

Dr Michael Smyth, Associate Professor, Centre for Interaction Design, Edinburgh Napier University - Welcome to the Algorithmic Age - From Life Between Buildings to Life Between Systems

Our cities are changing and those changes are happening all around us, mostly we become aware once the change has happened but increasingly we remain unaware of how these changes in hardware, software and networked data change the way we live our daily lives. Whether you call it the hybrid city, the sentient city, the media city, the smart city, or just the place where you live or work, what has changed in the last decade is the rapid technologisation of everyday urban life. Public and private spaces are filled up with smaller, smarter technologies. Software, as much as architects and planners, is organising and managing urban life. This talk will explore what these changes might mean for us as citizens, employees, consumers and, most importantly, social beings.

Michael Smyth is an Associate Professor in the Centre for Interaction Design, Edinburgh Napier University, UK. He has been active in the fields of human computer interaction and interaction design since 1987. He is the co-editor of the book entitled “Digital Blur: Creative Practice at the Boundaries of Architecture, Design and Art”. Michael grew up in a generation that can remember men landing on the moon, he listened to the music of Ziggy and dreamt about a future and things that did not yet exist. He likes to tell stories, not stories about the past, but stories about our futures. His hope is that these stories allow us to better understand our world and our place in it and critically what that could be like in the future.

www.napier.ac.uk/people/michael-smyth

Twitter - @michael_smyth

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