It was a shock to discover that SCL has a {time machine: http://www.scl.org/site.aspx?i=ev36209} available. Of course, we have long been known for innovation and an edginess just the right side of the bleeding variety. But making a time machine available did exceed my expectations.
It was no surprise though to discover that the pilot of the machine was Dr Ian Brown of the Oxford Internet Institute. He recently tweeted a picture of himself in a three-piece suit outside No 10 Downing Street and I remember thinking at the time that one of us must have entered another dimension. It is something of a relief to discover that it is him – he was probably on a practice run.
The name of the SCL Time Machine is the Technology Law Futures Forum. It has limited range and no reverse gear – it can project you forwards but not into the past. We hope that by the time Dr Brown pilots us on the journey into the future in June we will have found a way to get you back to 2014. Seats for the journey are on sale on the SCL web site now; in the event that you do end up stuck in the future, all money will be repaid (in the currency of the time – whether bitcoin or roubles).
I am exaggerating a touch. But the Technology Law Futures Forum is indeed the training event of the future. You may well find yourself sitting in a more mundane event 20 years from now and hear the same perceptions from the SCL CPD training robot. While some of the sessions do look only a short distance ahead, these are focused on privacy and data protection – I assume this is because these concepts are endangered species and Dr Brown wants to cover them before their extinction.
Aspects of the future to be covered include drones, robots, the Internet of Things, wearable tech, driverless cars and the personal data locker. You can look forward to the time when you are pulled over in your driverless car by a drone, which was alerted via a grass in the IoT – the Technology Law Futures Forum will be all that, without the fine.
The evening keynote speech on 26 June is free to attend. That speech is from Paul Nemitz, Director, Fundamental rights and Union citizenship European Commission, Directorate-General for Justice. It deals with the future prospects for Big Data and the Cloud, Safe Harbor and DP Reform. It will involve only a short journey into the future so, if necessary, you can sit and wait for time to catch up.
You can get full details of the event {here: http://www.scl.org/site.aspx?i=ev36209}.
