Beyond tomorrow: Looking into the future

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We might not be able to see the future, but that won’t stop us from exploring it

Scientists, writers, philosophers, and entertainers are descending on Cardiff on 8thJune to gaze into the future at a two-day event at the National Museum in order to debate and discuss some of the biggest questions.

The conference brings together some of the world’s leading thinkers, including environmental lawyer Polly Higgins, comedian Richard Herring, former UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser Professor Sir David King, and award-winning science fiction author Paul McAuley, to illustrate visions of the future that are beginning to be realised today.

Professor Kevin Warwick, the world’s first human cyborg and speaker at the event, said: ‘If there is to be any hope for humanity, we have to engage with issues on a significant level. The rate of technological advancement is raising new ethical debates. We must develop as quickly as possible technologies that directly link human brains and computers, so that artificial brains contribute to human intelligence rather than acting against it.’

Sara Passmore, conference organiser and Head of Education and Promotion at the British Humanist Association, said: ‘Everything from climate change to the increase in population needs to explored and understood if we are to be able to live the most successful and fulfilling lives possible. Our understanding of these issues and debates has to be meaningful, and to be meaningful it has to become personal. This conference will enable a wide audience to engage with these issues, find out what is being done to effect our futures, and what possibilities lie before us.’

Beyond Tomorrow: Visions of the Future, is one of the biggest annual gathering of atheists, sceptics, and freethinkers in the UK. Details can be found at http://bhaconference.org.uk/

ENDS

Notes to editors

Time and date: 6:00pm Friday 8 June – 12:30pm Sunday 10 June

Venue: National Museum Cardiff, Cathays Park, Cardiff, CF10 3NP

Tickets available from www.humanism.org.uk/conference2012

For further comment or press passes contact Sara Passmore on 020 7079 3586 or by email at sara@humanism.org.uk.

More information can be found at http://bhaconference.org.uk/

About the speakers:

Professor Sir David King FRS is the former UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser and Head of the Government Office of Science. He is currently Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at the University of Oxford, Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, Senior Scientific Advisor to UBS, and Science Adviser to President Kagame of Rwanda.

Richard Herring is the hugely talented British comedian and writer who started his comedy career with his long time friend and writing partner Stewart Lee. Richard is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association, and in 2010 was named The Pod Delusion’s ‘Comedian of the Year’.

Kevin Warwick is Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, England, where he carries out research in artificial intelligence, control, robotics and biomedical engineering. Kevin is the author or co-author of more than 500 research papers and has written and edited 27 books. Sometimes called ‘The First Human Cyborg’ Kevin was successful with the first extra-sensory (ultrasonic) input for a human and with the first purely electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans. The Institute of Physics selected Kevin as one of only seven eminent scientists to illustrate the ethical impact their scientific work can have: the others being Galileo, Einstein, Curie, Nobel, Oppenheimer and Rotblat.

Mark Stevenson is a London-based British author, comedian, businessman, public speaker and futurologist, as well as a former semi-professional musician. His stand-up material focuses on science and he has appeared on BBC Radio 4′s long-running program You and Yours. Recently, Mark released a book entitled An Optimist’s Tour of the Future which predicts that invention and innovation can help overcome several of humanity’s current problems.

Carole Jahme is a journalist, author, broadcaster, performer and film and programme maker who manages to synthesise Darwinian theory in almost all of her creative ventures. Carole started her professional life as a model, dancer and actress, she worked with Gerry Cottles Circus performing on the trapeze, tight rope, clowning, acrobatics and acted in movies, TV, radio and theatre, with the likes of Morgan Freeman and Robert Downey Jr, but the call of the wild, particularly the call of wild primates, proved too seductive to resist…

Paul McAuley is an award-winning science fiction author specialising in hard science fiction dealing with themes such as biotechnology, alternate history/alternate reality, and space travel.  Born in England in 1955 Paul holds a Ph.D in Botany, and worked as a researcher in biology in various universities, including Oxford and UCLA. Paul’s first novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars, won the Philip K Dick Memorial Award. Fairyland won the 1995 Arthur C Clarke Award for best SF novel published in Britain.

Polly Higgins is a barrister, environmental lawyer and author who in 2010 proposed to the United Nations that ecocide be recognised as an international Crime Against Peace alongside Genocide, Crimes of Humanity, War Crimes and Crimes of Aggression, triable at the International Criminal Court. Her years spent inside London courts representing individuals and corporations on discrimination cases brought her to the conclusion that the planet was also being treated unfairly, in particular by damaging corporate activity – but that nothing was being done to stop the abuse. In her 2010 publication Eradicating Ecocide Polly stated: ‘Corporations are the ones gambling our planet away and our governments are running the casino.’

Ben Hammersley was born in Leicester in 1976. He is a renowned British internet technologist, journalist, author, broadcaster, and diplomat. His credits include Editor at Large of Conde Nast’s Wired UK magazine, and a member of the European Commission High Level Expert Group on Media Freedom. He is also a freelance reporter for the BBC, a consultant to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and Ambassador to East London Tech City. Following travelling undercover to interview the Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in 1999, Ben moved toward war correspondence and technological innovation.

Iszi lawrence is an English comedian, illustrator and artist. She is the voice of the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe and has her own weekly podcast Sunday’s Supplement which she co-hosts with TV writer Simon Dunn. She is an international speaker on skepticism and atheism. She has six brothers and sisters (half of whom are Muslim) and is an only child. She lives with a poet and a cat who is rubbish at chess.

Gregory Claeys is an historian of radical, reform and socialist movements in late 18th and 19th century Britain. The author of seven books, he has focussed upon many of the leading secularist figures of this period, including Thomas Paine, William Godwin, Robert Owen and John Stuart Mill. He has long been interested in utopianism and dystopianism. He is particularly interested in eugenics, Malthusianism, Social Darwinism, feminism, and the fault-lines dividing utopian from dystopian projections of the future.

Roger Martin was a career diplomat for 22 years, serving in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the UN before resigning ‘in fury’ as a Deputy High Commissioner to become an environmentalist in the South West. Over the last 24 years he has been elected and appointed to countless local, regional and national Quango and NGO ‘green’ bodies, where he first noticed the ‘mad taboo’ on discussing the impact of population growth. He is now Chair of the environmental charity Population Matters. When asked, he describes his religion as ‘ecoist’

About the British Humanist Association

The British Humanist Association is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people who seek to live ethical and fulfilling lives on the basis of reason and humanity. It promotes a secular state and equal treatment in law and policy of everyone, regardless of religion or belief.

Sara Passmore, Head of Education and Promotion, British Humanist Association. Email: sara@humanism.org.uk Telephone: 0044 207 079 3586

British Humanist Association (BHA)

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