Bangalore

Brave Conversations Bangalore 2021 took place on 19 February, 2021 online organised by IIIT Bangalore.

Brave Conversations Bangalore 2021 followed on from the very successful Bangalore 2020 event but due to Covid19 was held fully online.

The conversations explored the past year of living through the Pandemic and how the Internet and Web enabled people to work, school and live their daily lives. Without these technologies things would have gone very differently (as Yuval Noah Harari comments in a recent Financial Times article) but now is the time to explore next steps and what role our governments play in determining how we "ind the right balance between useful surveillance and dystopian nightmares".

The event occurred whilst the Australian Government was in the midst of it's stoush with Facebook over media publishing laws which has set the stage for other governments globally to begin to more strongly regulate the behaviour of the Tech Giants. It also occurred in the midst of the Toolkit case in India which highlighted the use of digital information platforms for public campaigns.

With the support of IIIT and the Web Science Institute we explored how the “new normal” is beginning to develop and impact on everyday lives where we are increasingly relying on our Smarter Machines.