Behind the Headlines | Human+Technology Beyond Covid-19

Recorded June 11, 2020. As we move exclusively online for work,
education and communication, our Behind the Headlines discussion
explores how the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the immersion of
technology into our lives. Covid-19 has given us a glimpse of what
a technological-based future might look like. As society applies
technology to recover from global events that trigger a shift in
human thinking and behaviour, it is clear that the fundamental
issues that we face today cannot be solved by one discipline,
industry or approach alone. Amplified by social isolation, there
has never been a better time to consider the implications of these
virtual environments on human societies, both in the present crisis
and beyond Covid-19. Our expert panel will explore a human-centred
approach to technology innovation; how it can empower and
disempower; and why technological design must begin and end with
the human experience at the fore. This discussion marked the start
of a new five year programme in Trinity, HUMAN+, cofunded by the
European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Marie Slodowska-Curie Actions.
The programme will appoint international researchers from across
the arts, humanities and computer sciences to work together and
with enterprise partners to develop human centric approaches to
technology innovation that will have long term benefits for
society. HUMAN+ is led by the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and
Humanities Research Institute and ADAPT, the Science Foundation
Ireland Centre for Digital Content Innovation at Trinity College
Dublin. Panellists: Lorna Ross, is Chief Innovation Officer with
VHI Health & Wellbeing. With a design career spanning 30 years,
Lorna recently participated in RTE’s Big Life Fix, challenging a
group of leading designers, engineers, computer programmers and
technology experts to create inventions that will transform
people's lives. Until recently she was Group Director at the Fjord
design studio inside Accenture’s global R&D centre The Dock,
where she founded and led the Human Insights Lab before her move to
VHI in April 2019. Vincent Wade is Director of the ADAPT Centre for
Digital Media Technology and Chair of Computer Science, School of
Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin. His
research focuses on intelligent systems, AI and Personalisation. As
Director of ADAPT, Vincent heads a world leading research Centre
uniquely focused across the life cycle of digital media, which
pioneers technologies for media analytics, advanced machine
learning, machine translation, media personalization, speech &
multimodal interaction and eithics & privacy in media. Jennifer
Edmond is Associate Professor of Digital Humanities and Director of
Strategic Projects for the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social
Sciences in Trinity College Dublin and the co-director of the
Trinity Center for Digital Humanities. She has developed a
significant profile in European research and research policy
circles, and has led and coordinated a number of major EU projects
around knowledge complexity, digital historical research, virtual
research environments, and infrastructures for digital research in
the arts and humanities. Ann Devitt, is Assistant Professor of
Modern Languages and Director of Research at the School of
Education in Trinity College Dublin, and academic director for
Learnovate. She is interested in technology enhanced learning and
the use of computational, corpus and network science methods to
examine language data. Learnovate is the the research and
innovation centre focused on education tech funded by Enterprise
Ireland and hosted in TCD. You can find out more about Human+ at
our new website www.humanplus.ie/ For general enquires about Human+
contact humanplus@tcd.ie Learn more at:
https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/