In the year 2525, if man is still alive…

Our talk in May 2017 was presented by Carolina Bartram, Associate Director at Arup. Carolina questions how we mediate our relationship with technology. She suggests that perhaps at times we are ambivalent towards this relationship.
Carolina states that technology is not enough to fulfil our needs to communicate in architecture and engineering. We will always look back to sketches, the spoken word and those artefacts, which are made by hand.
As we are immersed in the digital age we are almost oblivious to the way this affects our relationship. Taking a look at films and books, Carolina suggests that perhaps we have always had this subliminal fascination. We are all familiar with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and George Orwell’s 1984, and more recently Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. Star Trek and Star Wars fans are amongst us and influence our modern day thinking, whether consciously or sub-consciously.
Carolina argues that whilst AI can replicate logical jobs and
automated processes she suggests technology cannot replicate the arts, music and crafts. Taking this thinking forward Carolina asks if 30% of our jobs will be taken over by a form of AI, where does this leave our industry?