- 10/11/2022
- Category: Press Release
As long as human civilization is still developing, technology will continue to be the most important thing that cannot be updated. It is undeniable that technology is an effective tool to make a better world in the future, so researchers are trying to make technology as a support for the latest research innovations. Seeing this phenomenon, the Goethe Institute, Center for Digital Society, and EngageMedia brought together researchers who are experts in their fields for culture in a panel discussion series “Digital Discourses” which was divided into four sessions on Friday (28/10).
On this occasion, Digital Discourse invited experts from different sub-themes ranging from Health, Food, AI, and Imaginary Future. The researchers were Herawati Sudoyo (Chairperson of the Medical Commission in Indonesian Academy of Sciences), Danuta Gawel (Senior Bioinformatics at Mavatar AB), Wong Kak Ming (Research Scientist in Shiok Meats), Wiebke Denkena (Project Manager for Technology & Geopolitics in Stiftung Neue Verantwortung (SNV)), and Stephen Oram (Writer in Science Fiction Writer). The event was broadcast live via Zoom and CfDS YouTube channels.
The Future of Health: How is Technology Changing Health Care?
Digital Discourse – The Future of Health
Indonesia launched a genomics initiative that aims to sequence individual sequences of various topics. An important thing that can be done in building a representative population reference data set that improves the interpretation of variants globally and to accelerate the discovery of genes associated with rare diseases is broad implementation. The implementation of genomics in healthcare is slightly different in HIC than in LIMC.
Furthermore, digital twins are needed for personalized medicine because several supporting factors are still lacking, such as the high cost of new drug discovery. “Therefore, in the next five years plans will be formed to expand by involving all countries because digital twins are the future of digital medicine,” Danuta explained.
The Future of Food: Can Food Developed in Labs Save the Environment?
Digital Discourse – The Future of Food
Issues regarding population growth, high consumption levels, and the impact of climate change create four parameters to measure future food security, namely food affordability, handling for the food supply chain, Natural Resources (SDA) and environmentally friendly resilience and alternative ways of producing food, and quality tests to ensure quality, safety, and nutrition.
“Improving food safety requires innovation and efficiency, such as Shiok Technology (a scalable cellular farming process adapted for crustacean cells) and Cultivated Meat as an alternative protein that strengthens the meat supply chain that can be produced locally. However, there are still challenges in this solution, namely technological developments and consumer acceptance,” explained Wong.
How Technology Shapes Geopolitics: Will AI Change Global Power Relations
Digital Discourse – How Technology Shapes Geopolitics
The power held for the emergence of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) is considered to be able to change global power relations. AI is divided into two groups, namely weak and strong. Weak AI handles single tasks and strong AI is judged to be reaching “human-level intelligence” in the future.
AI models are built around large, high-quality datasets because in some areas, data is a huge competitive advantage, but in other areas, data is less competitive, such as public data. “Only a few actors around the world have all the ingredients to build and deploy large AI systems at scale: a new dependency vector” Wiebke said.
The Imaginary Future: Is Science Fiction Predictive or Inspirational?
Digital Discourse – Future Imaginaries
“Influencing and predicting the future and raising ethical issues around technology and society can use speculative fiction,” says Stephen. Speculative fiction is a broad category of fiction that includes genres with elements that do not exist in reality, recorded history, nature, or the current universe. Fiction may be able to predict seven influences in the future as stated in Better Made Up: The Mutual Influence of Science of Fiction and Innovation, Nesta Working Paper No. 13/07, Caroline Bassett, Ed Stein Mueller, George Voss 2013.
“If science fiction writers are not directly involved with science and technology, the discussion is about the general direction of technology. Science fiction highlights the predictions of the human social element, so there can be no accurate prediction of what it will be like” Stephen explains.
Author: Muhammad Alfasya Syabil Salatar
Editor: Firya Q. Abisono
