Barcelona

Anchored at the 2022 ACM Web Science Conference

https://websci22.webscience.org/programme/brave-conversations/

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Venue: Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain and Online via Zoom

This event - our 17th since the first in 2017 - has been held around the world both in person and online.

This one was held within the context of the World 'waking up' from Covid - people eager to participate in person; others being able to Zoom in from all over the planet, and humanity beginning to explore what the world Post-Pandemic might begin to look like.

This meant investigating how governments are now increasingly in control of personal data, Artificial Intelligence is progressing at a rapid pace, and our notion of what it is to be human is shifting.

Our goal is to bring the conversations of Web Science to the public space and since then have worked with communities to explore how technologies are changing their lives, and how they, in turn, are changing those technologies.

In 2022 Brave Conversations will be held in ‘hybrid’ form with both in-person and remote attendance as part of the 2022 ACM Web Science Conference.

As a core part of this we will deliberately create a space where everyone can be brave, can say the things that they know need to be said, and be prepared to apply intellectual rigour to challenging ideas that might take us to uncomfortable places.

Humans, Values, Technology - Web Science in Practice

“And in today, already walks tomorrow.” - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Whatever “Covid” is and has been is now part of the fabric of our everyday lives as we emerge in to the 2020s having faced the challenge of the Pandemic saturated world. People have been locked up at home as they would never have imagined; national borders have been slammed shut; and technologies have enabled medical research breakthroughs at unprecedented speeds.

We have also begun to fully embrace the space between physical and virtual which has changed how we work, play and learn. It has changed our relationships with each other, with our communities and governments and with ourselves.

So what does this mean for humanity and planet as the world struggles to deal with global challenges such as Climate Change and resource depletion? How can we embrace the opportunities of the digital realm whilst responsibly navigating the challenges it presents.

This is the focus of what we will explore at Brave Conversations Barcelona informed by research we are currently supporting with ‘young people (see https://braveconversations.org/brave-conversations-future-worlds-challenge-2021/) to create a better ‘future world.

Brave Conversations was created to bring Web Science to mainstream conversations that occur in everyday life. It’s objective is to demystify the world of emerging technologies and enable an exploration of the impact that these technologies will have on everyday life - our selves, our communities, our societies and our planet. It has always sought to ask difficult questions, to challenge mindsets and to empower those who attend to think more inquisitively about their digitally mediated lives.

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