Speaking & Media
A technologist’s perspective on history. A historical perspective on technology.
I’ve spent over four decades working with technology and rather longer being fascinated by history.
Those two perspectives increasingly lead me to the same question:
What can the past teach us about the world we’re creating?
I write and speak about the places where history, technology and human behaviour collide, particularly artificial intelligence, social media, disinformation and the way societies respond to technological change.
The subjects may be serious. That doesn’t mean we have to discuss them as though we’re sitting an exam.
What can history teach us about AI?
Artificial intelligence feels unprecedented.
In many ways it is.
But societies have lived through disruptive technological changes before, from mechanisation and mass production to the telegraph, broadcasting and the Internet.
What happened when those technologies arrived? How did people react? Which fears proved justified? Which didn't? And are there lessons hidden in those earlier upheavals that might help us navigate this one?
Why does false information spread so well?
Disinformation didn't begin with social media.
Human beings have always been susceptible to rumours, propaganda, sensational stories and ideas that reinforce what we already believe.
What has changed is the technology carrying them.
When information can travel instantly, globally and from almost anyone to potentially millions of other people, some very old human tendencies acquire rather more serious consequences.
Add artificial intelligence to the equation and things become more interesting still.
What happened when everyone became a publisher?
For most of history, comparatively few people possessed the means to communicate with very large audiences.
Printing changed that. Newspapers changed it again. Radio and television created mass audiences on an extraordinary scale.
Then the Internet and social media did something different.
They gave almost everyone the ability to publish.
What happens to trust, authority and truth when information no longer travels simply from a few broadcasters to many people, but potentially from everyone to everyone else?
What if we could actually learn from history?
History isn't an instruction manual.
People, societies and technologies don't repeat themselves neatly enough for that.
But history does give us thousands of years of experiments in human behaviour, leadership, technological disruption, communication, power, success and occasionally spectacular failure.
Ignoring all of that experience seems an unnecessarily difficult way to approach the future.
Letters to Dead People
Sometimes the easiest way into history is simply to ask the people who made it what on earth they thought they were doing.
Letters to Dead People and More Letters to Dead People, written with Ivor Share, use imaginary letters to figures from history to explore their lives, achievements, mistakes and legacies.
The books and companion podcast provide a lighter route into many of the same questions that interest me elsewhere:
What did these people do? Why did they do it? And what, if anything, can we learn from them?
Interviews, podcasts and events
I’m available for conversations, interviews and talks around history, technology and society, including:
- artificial intelligence and technological change;
- social media and the changing information landscape;
- disinformation, misinformation and trust;
- previous technological and communications revolutions;
- what history can teach us about responding to disruptive technology;
- Letters to Dead People and the stories behind the books;
- and the broader question: what can we actually learn from history?
I’m particularly interested in conversations that make complicated subjects accessible to a general audience without pretending the complications aren't there.
Media and speaking enquiries
For radio, television, podcasts, articles, panels, festivals, talks and other enquiries:
Stay in touch
I also write Lessons From History.