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James Sharpe on the Swarm Organ project and futuristic technologies

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31
Jul
Wed, 31/07/2013 - 11:36

James Sharpe on the Swarm Organ project and futuristic technologies

"Eventually one day, sooner or later (its not gonna be that soon), human technology will not be fragile, will not be constantly breaking. And it will be because we have managed to get rid of this separation from the doers, the thinkers and the object that we're building. The objects that we'll build will actually think and move for themselves and this will make them much more robust".
A quote taken from James Sharpe talk during Activate 2013 London, an event organized by The Guardian last 9th of July where "some of the world's most influential and inspirational figures will once again descend on Kings Place, London to discuss and debate how far we have come in using the open web and technology to transform how we do business and reshape the world".
He explained the idea behind SWARM-ORGAN, an European collaborative research project coordinated by James lab, with the participation of the John Innes Centre, the University of Surrey and the University of Amsterdam (UvA). This project tries to understand how cells make an organ or the spatially-controlled growing of a plant, and to apply these principles to technological systems.
The project is funded by the Future and emerging technologies (FET) of the European commission.
Other speakers of the talk were Vint Cerf, vice president and chief internet evangelist at Google; Helen Clark, administrator, United Nations Development Programme;  Maria Eitel, CEO and President, Nike Foundation; Paul Hilder, vice-president of global campaigns, Change.org; Professor Jeff Jarvis, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism; and many more. Take a look at the complete list of speakers here.
The idea if the event is to address questions like:

  • To what extent is technology serving human needs?
  • Can open government data really save the world?
  • Cities, innovation and entrepreneurship – what can London learn from other cities?
  • How will the next phase of the web be funded?
  • Across education and healthcare how is mobile being used to drive change?

Please take 7minutes of your time to watch James video: http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/video/2013/jul/25/activate-2013-james-sharpe