Living Digital
If you’re like most people, your smartphone is your alarm clock. Some heinous tone or favourite song rouses you out of a dreaming unconsciousness into your dark bedroom, and your day starts. From there it’s an Uber to work, social posts, Google searches, drinks with friends organized via text, some questionable online purchases when you get home, check your steps on your activity tracker, then you plug in your phone and off to sleep to repeat it the next day. This is what we mean by Living Digital, one of the program tracks at True North 2019.
We live in the future, and we barely notice until something goes wrong. Or makes us feel icky. Artificial intelligence has become the shorthand, the metaphor, the tech that is emblematic of everything that’s amazing, but uncertain, about our tech future. There are also persistent issues of data security and privacy that should be fixable, but aren’t fixed yet because we’re still too busy moving fast and breaking things.
For the Living Digital program track, we’re excited to welcome a group of thinkers and builders who have the insight and experience to discuss these topics, challenge consensus thinking and point to a better path forward.
Director of Product at the Microsoft Research Montréal AI lab
- As machine learning algorithms and AI continue to make more important decisions in our lives and our communities, how do we design for fairness and impartiality?
Associate faculty member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
- AI tech can already do wondrous things simply because computers can sift through enormous data sets. What happens when quantum computers are powering the AI of the future with extraordinarily higher processing speeds?
Distinguished Expert-in-Residence, Privacy by Design Centre of Excellence at Ryerson University
- In her three terms as Information & Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Ann saw the rise of social media and was a world-leading voice for building privacy into tech design. Will we ever get our privacy back?
Chief Officer of Innovation Labs and New Ventures for Interac
- An expert in mobile commerce, digital ID and cryptocurrency solutions, Debbie is one of Canada’s foremost authorities on the digital economy. As the where she makes sure you money transfers get where they need to go.
Founder and Head of Strategy at Take Some Risk Inc.
- Everything Duane knows about digital exhaustion he probably learned as a digital nomad, living la vida laptop in more than 40 countries while working on more pay-per-click landing pages than is probably healthy.
Reporter at The Logic
- Catherine will lead a panel discussion called Tech in the #MeToo Era: How the Reckoning has Impacted Canada’s Tech Space.
Inventor of the World Wide Web
- It’s rare thing for a person to invent something as monumental and world-changing as the web. It’s rarer still to understand and plan for the possibility that your invention could easily be misused and altered in problematic ways. Tim has seen the future again, and this time it’s a web that works for people.
