IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017 - 18

We set ourselves the challenge of
encouraging debate, critical
thinking, creative design and
social awareness in order to
push the boundaries in terms
of thinking about the World
and the Web and our focus is
on helping to develop "smart
humans" for the digital age.

Perhaps part of being brave is to
raise your head from the day to
day, see what is on the horizon,
and face what the future is
presenting you.
We hoped to create a space where,
as Martin Stewart-Weeks describes in
his follow-up paper,
Conversations are exchanges.
And the point of an exchange
is to create something - in
this case, insights, ideas and
knowledge - that was not
there before the conversation started.
So, how did we go and what did
we achieve?
The feedback we have received
has been very personal, and our
hope that Brave Conversations would
be a very personal experience has
been supported by this. For some,
the conversations were those with
which they are already familiar
and they were a little disappointed at the lack of integration and
the persistence of silos; for others
there was a lot of personal bravery
in revealing both a level of technological ignorance as well as naivety

18

about the Web and its origins. For
ever yone the time, c o n s t r a i n t s
meant that it was difficult to delve
deeply into key issues; but for
many there wa s a n over whelm
of information.
From my observations as the
facilitator - and thus hav ing to
sit on the outside for most of the
time  - it seemed that a lot of
people were t a ken out of their
comfort zones, particularly
on Day One which was relatively unstructured, and
relied on the energy of the
group to create momentum.
Pia Waugh's first sess i o n
Choose Your Own Adventure Please, a r ticulated
some of the challenges of
data as the currency of the
dig it a l age, and Nichola s
Gr uen's session Art eries
and Capillaries gave a counterpoise by challenging the
current structures through which
society is governed, speaking to
ideas he has articulated in a recent
essay in Mandarin. These two presentations set the scene for the afternoon when people chose one of
these four themes
■ Democracy & politics
■ Privacy & individual liberty
■ New economics
■ Technology leadership & ethics
The task was, within a limited
timeframe, to scratch the surface
in terms of identifying key changes
aligned to the potential impacts on
individuals, organizations, and communities, and identify what actions
could, and should, be considered
to benefit the humans, and the machines. This was always a big ask,
and the solution wasn't our goal - it
was the process we were seeking.
As a part of this process Martin, in his summar y of Day One,
asked ever yone to identify their
greatest concern through a question, which was then collated and
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

ex hibited the next mor ning on
the Brave Conversations website
(www.braveconversations.org).
The challenge of any two-day
format is that there is never really
enough time, but by the end of Day
One many of the boundaries had
begun to break down and there was
an engaging energy in the room when
we all convened over drinks at the
National Press Club, courtesy of our
wonderful host Tim Shaw.
On Tuesday we began the more
formal part of the event with a
Welcome to Country and Smoking
Ceremony performed by Auntie
Agnes Shea and her nephew Robert,
his son Peter, and Peter's daughter
Lexie - the first time that all four
generations had worked together.
The sun shone, the courtyard of University House enveloped us all, and
the magic of these ancient ceremonies energized and grounded the
conversations that ensued. I personally believe that these ceremonies
anchor any congregation of people
as they gather, but only when done
in an authentic way and given both
the reverence and gravitas that
they command. We were witness
to something very special, and I felt
that through this there was a certain
openness, honesty, and willingness
to collaborate that emerged within
the group as a whole, anchored to
the land, to the physical environment sheltered by the trees nestled
within the ANU, and overseen by our
collective ancestors from Australia
and beyond.
The energy that second morning was palpable, so much so that
we changed the format in order to
accommodate what we felt was
required from the group in its desire
to both engage and converse. The
first panel's focus on The World -
With and Without the Web brought
many of the threads of Day One
together, and the Debate A MachineDriven World is a Better World
∕

SEPTEMBER 2017
http://www.braveconversations.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017
