Recorded Monday 23rd May 2011 at The Free Word Centre.

Chair: Becky Hogge, with Gia Milinovich, Angela Saini and Ken Hollings.

Over the last century technology has evolved exponentially and has changed our lives in ways that are too numerous to count. But what effect does technology have on wider society? How has it changed the ways we interact and communicate? Does technology have the capacity to change fundamentally who we are as human beings? Has technology freed us, or have we become its slaves? And what of the future? Will technology save or harm the planet?

Discussing these questions and more are:

Gia Milinovich is a presenter, writer and blogger, specializing mainly in new media and film. She has an acute knowledge of computers, technology, the Internet and science. She has worked in a technical capacity on major blockbusters including The X-Files: I Want to Believe, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and 28 Weeks Later, and created the ‘behind the scenes’ website for the critically-acclaimed sci-fi film Sunshine. She advised on and appeared in the 2009 BBC programme Electric Dreams.

Angela Saini is an independent science journalist based in London, she has written for New Scientist, Wired, The Economist and leading scientific journals in the UK and the US. Her first television science documentary aired in November 2008, and she can be regularly heard reporting on technology issues for the BBC World Service radio show ‘Digital Planet’. She was named European Young Science Writer of the Year in 2009. bilingual English and Hindi speaker, she previously worked in India for The Hindu newspaper group. Angela is the author of Geek Nation: How Indian Science is Taking Over the World.

Ken Hollings is a writer based in London. His work draws freely upon trash culture, weird science, political intrigue and strange connections to reconfigure reality and demolish common assumptions. His work appears in a wide range of journals and publications, including The Wire, Sight and Sound and Strange Attractor. He has written and presented critically acclaimed programmes for BBC Radio 3, Radio 4, Resonance FM, NPS in Holland and ABC Australia. He is the author of Welcome to Mars: Science and the American Century 1947-1959 and Destroy All Monsters. Ken’s most recent project for Radio 3 was Requiem for The Network, a series of essays on the history, power and revolutionary change of information networks.

Technoutopia

RSA Thursday

Has the endless debate between believers and non-believers finally hit a brick wall? Are secularists in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater when they reject religion and its trappings, or is it possible for non-believers to find consolation and beauty in ritual and tradition too?

Renowned philosopher Alain de Botton argues that despite the falsity of supernatural claims of religion, they still have very important things to teach the secular world.

Rather than mocking or deriding religions, agnostics and atheists should instead steal from them - because they're packed with good ideas on how to live and arrange our societies. De Botton proposes that we should look to the religious tradition for insights into how to build a sense of community, make our relationships last, get more out of art, overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy, and much more.

Chair: Matthew Taylor, chief executive, RSA.

Ciaran Carroll