The first speaker the team saw was a talk by author Jamie Bartlett, who wrote ‘The People vs. Tech’. Jamie discussed the impact of tech on politics, misunderstood story of Cambridge Analytica and how targeted advertising is currently the norm. The real story to consider here is how elections are changing, what does an election in 20 years time look like? A platform such as Facebook having an impact politics would have been considered crazy in 1997. How will political parties deliver their message to their audience in the future and be considerate of data protection laws? Election laws are outdated, full visibility is needed to be able to keep politicians accountable and prevent cheating.
The second speaker we saw was Simona Francese, who talked about the power of touch and laser technology. Fingers contain unique patterns of lines, they contain an entire world of information, they are made up of molecules. Do you ever stop to think about the finger prints to leave behind? Criminals often don’t either and we can recover a lot of information from them, even if a fingerprint is vague or overlaps, due to the molecules telling a story - this is also referred to as chemical criminal profiling. The molecules can tell a story of medicine that might have been taken or materials that have been touched. Even alcohol can be detected, and therefore the state of a criminal when they committed a crime can be determined.
