2010 Pugwash Conference Working Agenda

Our Technological Future: Problems, Perils, and Promises

FRIDAY

5:30pm – 6:00pm

Check-in

 

6:00pm – 7:15pm

Industrial Society: Past as Prologue

Today’s society, institutions, and interactions would be unrecognizable to people 200 years ago, let alone 2000 years ago.  In order to imagine tomorrow’s world, it is important to understand the origins of ours. Learn how recent technological progress has affected human society and the way we see the world; from the changes in the way we conceptualize space due to the advent of the automobile and aero plane to the changes in our family structures in a postindustrial wage-based economy.

 

7:15pm – 7:45pm

Dinner

 

7:45pm – 9:00pm

Predicting the Future

Futurists in the 1950s predicted an age of atomic power in everything from home furnaces to flying cars, and soothsayers have prophesized from time immemorial. How can we make credible predictions about the future when the future is inherently unknowable?

 

9:00pm

Conference Social

SATURDAY

8:00am – 9:00am

Breakfast

 

9:00am – 10:15am

Resource Depletion and Overpopulation

Our technology and consumer lifestyle require massive amounts of resources to maintain, and as ever more people are born and adopt a modern standard of living, more and more demand is placed on the ultimately finite resources of the Earth. Can modern civilization come to terms with the limits imposed by nature, and if not, what lies in store for us in the years ahead?

 

10:15am – 10:30am

Break

 

10:30am  – 11:45am

Breakout Session

Topics:Energy and Sustainability

Changing Finance and Entrepreneurship

Networks and Computing Systems

 

11:45am – 1:00pm

Lunch

 

1:00pm – 2:15pm

Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Cognitive Computing

Can humans create a sentient machine intellectually equal (or superior) to its creators? If so, when and how can this be achieved, and what would be the nature of a mind built from binary and silicon? Also, the future of robotics and cognitive computing will be examined.

 

2:15pm – 3:30pm

Breakout Session

Topics:Nanotechnology

War and peace

Medicine / Transhumanism Ethics

 

3:30pm – 4:00pm

Break

 

4:00pm – 5:15pm

Breakout Session

Topic:Future of Space Travel

Policy, Law, and Ethics

Genetic Engineering

 

5:15pm – 6:30pm

Keynote