After our future of futurists podcast, we had a few comments asking about our political leanings and the potential for the group to become politically biased. We really wanted to address this because, while politics will always come up at the futurists, we have no intention of turning it into a political group. Instead, we want to create a platform where ideas can be discussed safely and intelligently. No matter where a good idea comes from, if it’s a good idea or an interesting idea, we want to know about it!
We have to stress here that we have never asked our speakers for their political viewpoint before asking them to speak and nor do we plan to. The Manchester Futurists intends to continue to be a neutral platform focused on ideas rather than ideologies.
We also wanted to address the role of technology in the future. While we want to broaden out or topics of conversation, like politics, technology will likely always feature in our talks. However, this doesn’t mean that our talks will be purely about what technologies do or how they function. We want to be able to discuss the ethical implications of particular technologies or how they might affect future developments. We understand that not everyone who attends The Manchester Futurists is particularly ‘techie’ and hope that by changing our focus, we can be more inclusive and encourage a broader audience to attend.
In this podcast, Hannah, Ian, Caroline and Ahmed discuss the role of politics in the future and how our own ideas, ethics and political viewpoints vary. We discuss the role of tech in our talks and how we want to bring new perspectives of technology to our talks. We also talk about why it is so important that you, our lovely audience, share your suggestions for speakers and subjects you would like to hear more about.
Listen to our podcast here and direct mp3 download.
Please use the comments below to let us know your thoughts, suggestions and ideas. This is an open and evolving conversation and we want to make sure everyone gets a chance to add their voice!
You can also tweet your thoughts to @mcrfuturists.
Please note that while we try to respond to as many comments as possible, we might not be able to respond to them all!
Manchester Futurists 