Fri 23 March 12pm ‘The strategic significance and dangers of computer technologies for the future of the species’ A provocation by Lord Frank Judd

The year is 4000 AD. An alien species arrives on earth. The advance guard starts to probe what confronts it. They establish that there has been an advanced form of life on the planet. The more they look the more the indications are that it reached amazingly high levels of technological achievement and communication. It seemed to have become mesmerized by the speed of communication and the accumulation of information but its ability to evaluate and digest the information had withered. It all evidently collapsed.

A Provocation by Lord Frank Judd

With Respondents
• Josie Fraser, ICT Strategy Lead (Childrens Capital) Leicester City Council
• Suhail Debar, formerly of Islamic Relief
• Dr Thilo Boeck, Centre for Social Action, HLS



Lord Judd has been a Member of the House of Lords since 1991. From 1966-79 he was a Member of Parliament for Portsmouth, serving consecutively as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Defence, Minister for Overseas Development, and Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He was Director of Voluntary Service Overseas from 1980-85 and Director of Oxfam from 1985-91. He has been involved with De Montfort University since 1993 as a free ranging advisor working in different spheres of the university’s life. In more recent years he has been principally involved in work on scholarships and on relationships with the School of Applied Social Sciences as well as with sharing ideas with Professor Sue Thomas. He has an Honorary Doctorate from the university.

Lunchtime talk in the Transdisciplinary Common Room (TDC), Fletcher Quad. Bring your sandwiches and enjoy an informal and stimulating lunch break. There is always a pot of tea on the go.