**Event postponed due to illness**

Further information on a rescheduled event will be shared in due course...

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Automated Futures or Automated Features?

Public lecture by Professor Sarah Pink, Design and Emerging Technologies at Monash University, Australia

How will people live with emerging technologies in possible futures? How will automated systems and technologies become part of future life? As the data gathering, analytical and predictive capabilities of emerging technologies and systems grows, dominant narratives from engineering disciplines, business consultancies and industry frequently assume that they will be rolled out into society to make human lives more convenient, environmentally sustainable, and productive. Yet foresights from futures focused design ethnographic research developed in the Emerging Technologies Lab suggest such visions of automated futures are implausible and unrealistic, likely to inform bad investment and wasted resources. Instead, our work highlights how people are likely to engage with future automation, where they will wish to remain in control and how automated systems and technologies might best assist them in supporting future lives characterised by safety and care for themselves and the environment. How, I ask, can we resolve this tension, to instead plan for trusted and realistic futures?

Sarah Pink is Professor of Professor of Design and Emerging Technologies at Monash University, Australia. She is Director of the Emerging Technologies Research Lab; Co-Leader of the ‘People Programme’ for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society; and Associate Director (Consumers) Monash Energy Institute.