For the first of two satellite events as part of Battle of Ideas 2024*,  we welcome back author and broadcaster Timandra Harkness to discuss her new book, Technology is Not the Problem. 

We all know that our every move is tracked online, while data about every aspect of our lives is used to profile and target us. Why, despite this knowledge, do we willingly yield up intimate details about ourselves in return for personalised services?

In her new book, Technology is Not the Problem,  Timandra Harkness argues that the problem is us. It’s not the all-powerful algorithms that seduce us, but contemporary culture’s obsession with identity that drives our engagement with technology. Our insatiable need to be reassured that we are the person we want others to see keeps us coming back to the platforms that claim to recognise our unique qualities. We don’t have a shrinking sense of ourselves because of technology: we lean so heavily on technology because of our diminished sense of ourselves.

Tracing the historical and social currents that brought us here, Timandra challenges us to question what might be missing from our personalised menus, to defy the temptations of technology, and rescue our humanity from this dehumanising, data-driven world. To do this, we need to turn our energy away from the digital mirror of Narcissus, forge new social bonds, and turn our energies outwards to the world.

Speaker: Timandra Harkness is a writer and broadcaster.  She's a regular on the BBC and her Radio 4 documentaries include Data, Data Everywhere  and What Has Sat-Nav Done To Our Brains. Timandra writes about data and our relationship with technology, and is author of Big Data: Does Size Matter? (2016). 

*Battle of Ideas 2024 is two days of high-level, thought-provoking festival of debate organised by the Academy of Ideas, and held on Saturday 19th & Sunday 20th October at Church House, Westminster, London.