I am delighted to be the opening keynote speaker for FutureDay 2014 in Istanbul, organised by fellow futurists Ufuk Tahan,  Alphan Manas and Murat Sahin. This should be a great event – and very good timing for Turkey 🙂  So… if you are close by don't miss it!  The overall topic is The Future of Humanity and my keynote will focus on that as well. Check out the program here. On Twitter, the conversation will happen here.

My Keynote will be on “how to remain human in a digital society: Human-machine relationships, artificial intelligence, big data, automation and the future of jobs”

‘Intelligent machines’ are increasingly interconnecting. The Internet of Things is imminent, with sensor networks and mobile devices connecting everyone and everything everywhere in the near future., Singularity’ – the moment of when machines become as capable as humans – is quickly becoming a buzzword that rivals Social Media. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is certain to play a role everywhere, and robots are dropping in price dramatically while gaining quickly in functionality and skills. Exponential technological progress is evident everywhere – but how will we – as linear beings – cope with this increasing empowerment of software and machines, the tremendous gain in the flow of real-time information, and the far-reaching implications that these developments will have? How will we keep up with thousands of real-time datafeeds, the ever-increasing volume, variety and depth of input, the tsunami of incoming communications and the rapidly improving smartness – and increasingly deep intelligence – of software, devices and machines? Will humans need to be ‘augmented’, soon, in order to keep up, and if so, where will this take us? What will happen to our ethics in a world of ultra-smart intelligent agents, artificial intelligence and the coming ‘trans-humanism’?