Oxford London Lecture

The Internet and related technologies, like smartphones and social networking services, are now a pervasive part of British life. Connected cars, smart cities, and ambient loos are coming soon. How far can societies shape the development of such computing and communications technologies, so that they serve the public good as well as private interests? How can technologists translate values such as privacy into hardware designs, software code, and system architectures? Should - and can - governments intervene effectively to ensure this happens? And who decides what those values should be?

Where are the robots we seem to have been promised since the 1950s? What is the hold up? Are we nearly there now? For example, will cars be driving themselves soon? Professor Paul Newman talks about the nature and solutions of challenges which have arisen on the way to building machines that can labour, protect, explore, build, manufacture, care and drive in our name. Staggering changes in computing, connectivity and opportunity are coming together and this provides a platform from which to peer into what we should expect in the coming decade. Robotics will change us.