Filmed at the Battle of Ideas festival 2023, this engaging panel share their insights with a highly informed audience who chip in to great effect.
Engineering and technological progress in the modern day feels slow and cumbersome compared to 20, 50 or 100 years ago. It seems the progress we are making today is less impressive, or sometimes even regressive, compared to that of the twentieth century. Perhaps this is inevitable. For example, the leaps forward made by the invention of the transistor and the microprocessor were far more important than the incremental gains in speed and power-saving with the latest wave of five-nanometre chips, impressive though they are.
Maybe the laws of physics are the ultimate barrier we face? We’ve been promised nuclear fusion energy for 50 years but even the latest experimental reactors barely produce more power than gets put in. What is holding innovation back? Have we run out of ideas or are we limited by the laws of physics? Have we pretty much done all the ‘big stuff’? Has government intervention been a help or a hindrance? Do we even believe in technological progress anymore?
The speakers are:
Steve Jordan - director, hyperTunnel Limited
Simon Nash - environmentalist; speaker; activist and founder, Green Oil bicycle lubes
Dr Nikos Sotirakopoulos - visiting fellow, Ayn Rand Institute; instructor, Ayn Rand University; author, Identity Politics and Tribalism: the new culture wars
Sally Taplin - business consultant, Businessfourzero; visiting MBA lecturer, Bayes Business School
James Woudhuysen - visiting professor, forecasting and innovation, London South Bank University
The chair is: Martyn Perks - digital business consultant and writer; former Islington by-election independent candidate; co-author, Big Potatoes: the London manifesto for innovation