Matt Webb: Post-truth society & the technological trends and drivers behind it
TALK. “Post-truth is what happens when our ability to trust reality breaks down” — thus says Matt Webb (UK) Technologist and Investor with R/GA Ventures at Techfestival 2018, where he delivered an insightful keynote on the technological trends and drivers giving shape to the post-truth society. Watch his full keynote talk here to learn what Webb had to say about i.e. facial synthesis technology and voice synthesis software that manipulates the facial and audio expressions on videos, enabling users to make videos that make it look like anyone you want is saying whatever you want them to say, even though it did not really happen. Follow Webb on an exploration into what this means and what strategies we can use to cope with the post-truth society.
The reason why we have post-trust is that everyday online we don’t speak the truth. We say “friend”, but really we mean a small square image and a box of text. No real feelings, no pheromones, no consequences. I can say all kinds of nonsense online, and no one will punch me in the face. We wouldn’t be this confused if we started treating people like people, user-accounts as user-accounts and machine — no matter how magical they might seem — as machines. This is the strategy we must use to cope with post-truth”
Watch all Techfestival keynotes: Want to check out the rest of Techfestival 2018 keynotes? Find all keynotes here including talks by James Bridle, Lisa Mosconi, Angela Oguntala, Bruce Sterling and many more.
