It is important to keep that which makes us human at the centre, both when building and using new technology.

The events around GameStop’s stock price show how digital platforms can impact our financial systems.

The January 6 attack on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, demonstrated how online disinformation, amplification and platform algorithms have real-world impacts.

Online platforms aren’t designed with children in mind. For example, children are unaware of the risks that recommended content, auto-play and nudges bring to their use of the internet. Do digital spaces need strict design and development guidelines for services that will be used by young people?

The systems that underlie modern technology have gaping vulnerabilities that are being exploited by nations around the globe to maintain power and exert control.

COVID-19 vaccines are now being approved and deployed around the world. But will there be a sizable enough segment of the population willing to get them?

Where does the tech industries’ power lie? Are they “mind-control” platforms capable of influencing elections through algorithmic muscle, or does their true threat to society lie in market concentration?

Depending who you ask, big tech is either going to save humanity or destroy us. Taylor Owen thinks it’s a little more complicated than that. Join him in conversation with leading thinkers as they make sense of a world transformed by technology.

The US Judiciary antitrust hearing last month marked a turning point in the way government and society view the big tech companies. The investigation of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law, coupled with concerns about pandemic medical misinformation and the upcoming presidential election, means the tech industry is under greater scrutiny than ever before.

Advances in molecular biology, such as the gene-editing technology CRISPR, are enabling rapid developments in gene manipulation and a growing do-it-yourself community of biohackers. Genetic modifications can have global impacts. Who decides if research can proceed?