 I confess I felt like it was a little bit of a joke to get asked to be a speaker at this to ask a folk singer to come and speak at an event on technology and culture seems like a bit of a farce. But I've brought with me three imagined stories from the future written as if they were sort of newspaper or journal articles. There are a million different lenses through which you could look at this stuff but my skill is in telling stories and singing songs and engaging with people on an emotional level. I'm not a tech head in any respect. So I have three stories for you and the first of them takes place in Dundee where I studied philosophy as a teenager and that's my academic background is in philosophical enquiry. So I'm very interested in the ethical implications of technological innovation and where that might take us. And this first story is inspired by someone I used to work beside imagined into the future. So the story is called Betty Bags a Booker. Dundee grandmother Elizabeth McDade is the surprise winner of the 2030 Booker Prize for our debut novel The Bagging Area. A tragic comic tale of robotics redundancy and redemption, the story minds McDade's 30 years experience as a cleaner at the former Police Scotland HQ in Dundee before advanced maintenance bots made cleaning staff obsolete. The transition back in 2024 was brutal recalls McDade. The government was celebrating the savings to the public purse and there was a lot of guardian guff about the liberation of the human spirit from manual drudgery. We've been trained to turn up and do what we're told for centuries and without work loads of folk have no sense of purpose or dignity. McDade explains the book's title. Remember 20 years ago when the unstaffed supermarket tells first came in? We were all constantly getting buzzed and red lighted by those unexpected items in the bagging area. Well we're in the bagging area now and that's us isn't it? We are those unexpected items and we're still here and we don't quite fit. Known to fellow staff as Betty Dunachie, McDade writes under her maiden name. The 48 year old was a Dux medalist at Douglas Academy before becoming pregnant in her teens. Former head of janitorial services Derek Brown recalls, she was always a clever one. Betty's been getting printed in the telegraph letter pages for decades under the name E.R. McDade. Brilliant social commentary stuff but she never wanted anyone to know about it. When I get laid off stresses McDade I wrote every morning at the Wellgate library just to stay afloat. Thank goodness they never shut that place. Booker judge Ed Sheeran says, Elizabeth Dayview works speaks to the opportunities and indignities of contemporary technological change and to the ultimate resilience of the human spirit. Asked if she missed her cleaning days McDade remarked, I missed the crack and the space to think and imagine. Boredom and rhythm are the mother of invention and we're just saturated with stimulation now. McDade insists there's nothing remarkable about her ascent. The talents and voices of ordinary people have been lost to soul destroy and work for centuries. So maybe automation does open up new opportunities. At the very least we've got our stories and the bots don't have them yet. The bag in area is published by Carrangate Books. Automation is one of the big things that we're going to have to deal with in the next 13 years ahead of 2030 and some pieces of research suggest that up to 50% of what we consider jobs now will become obsolete by that time and it won't just be low skilled labour like cleaning. It'll be jobs of prestige, things like accountancy, pharmacy, even skilled medical procedures may be given over to automation and that's going to have a transformative effect on our culture and our sense of dignity as individuals and the whole idea of human dignity is one of the things that concerns me most about this because it's unclear whether or not technological innovation and automation will lead to new creative opportunities, the finding of new talent that's been hidden for centuries under work that was not creative or whether in fact this is the end of work as we know it and if it is the end of work then we're going to be faced with multiple generations of people with no work and no sense of purpose and we're going to have to find ways to deal with that. That opens up things that maybe a decade ago seemed like very left field ideas things like the citizens income for example become things that may become a societal necessity to head off a public health emergency or even the unravelling of civic society as we know it if you have 50% of people with no work and no sense of meaning and purpose that's got profound implications for how we get along with one another in our communities and in our country as a whole. It also brings up the issue of stories and people don't respond to statistics and data and facts you talked about how the ability to regurgitate facts is irrelevant because we can access them at any point but stories are the way that we make sense of change and always have done and one of the things that's become clear to me and even preparing for this event is how ill-equipped I feel about this area of expertise and endeavour and how much I've had to prepare just to come and talk for 15 minutes about the technological changes that might affect us and how valuable I think it would be to create spaces where our leading technologists and futurists work with children and young people for a start because to me my son in his capacity as a Minecraft designer was able to conceive of things that my imagination has shut down even as someone who makes a living now on my imagination and creative abilities and I think as a matter of urgency we need to look at ways in which our leading technologists are working in schools and in youth environments to try and imagine the future because I think my generation is not the generation to imagine what that might be like and it is through stories that I think raise ethical dilemmas for us that people will be able to make sense of how things might unfold and what our ethical priorities are for how it unfolds in the future I think it also flags up this issue of values that at the moment most of our technological development is driven by values of efficiency and convenience and speed and they are very particular values that we've chosen to make the important things that run our society and there are other ways to conceive of what's good and what's not good for our communities and we have choices about that and the choices that we make now are going to be baked into the kind of technological developments we choose to prioritise and invest in and research over the coming 13 years Okay, a second story and I have to confess that these stories all are all coloured by my own political biases, my parental paranoias and my hopes so they're very particular to my mindset and like I say every single one of us could come up with another multiplicity of possible ways to look at this but this one is called leave your phone at home A controversial rural housing and mental health support scheme nicknamed the New Llydites looks set to begin development in Argyll in the summer An initiative of clashing of haven estates owned for centuries by the McMurrin family the Haven Digital Retreat and Rehabilitation scheme will remove existing broadband masks from 10% of the county, ban private drone flights and enforce digital abstinence stones The scheme conceals a personal tragedy for estate owner Sir Anthony McMurrin whose 15 year old daughter Dominique took her life two years ago after a long period of cyber harassment sexting and so-called dig addiction My daughter was unable to cope with the 24 hour pressures of digital living, commented Sir Anthony Alcoholics can't live in breweries and vulnerable young people need private web free safe houses too In an unlikely alliance of old money and neo radicalism McMurrin has welcomed so-called digital separatists to the estate There's board and work available here on our extensive property for people willing to learn traditional crafts and skills said Sir Anthony The project will be managed as a not for profit enterprise and will sustain itself through voluntary labour, private health insurance as well as investment from traditional game sports and organic produce Nick Alder of Lothian Broadband who's fixed wireless leasehold at Clash in the Haven runs out in July said Urban areas have standard gigabyte fibre services now in some areas have access to internet drone services but it's not legally considered essential economic infrastructure Many remote areas still depend on building masts on private estates to maintain broadband reach and quality It's another example of entrenched landed privilege holding back economic development said local councillor Anna McIntosh This isn't just about interactive film streaming and social media connection it's about our smart energy networks, our household appliances and health monitoring apps that save rural lives Local leisure guru Miles Graham disagrees Sir Anthony isn't right about very much but I'm with him on the drone traffic It's totally out of hand here and our sense of wildness, peace and privacy is being lost A spokesperson for the Scottish Association for Mental Health said, digidiction still divides psychological opinion but there's unprecedented demand for youth mental health support services exacerbated by digital culture and the NHS can't cope The Haven model of patronage for a combined public-private digital retreat with professionally trained medical staff is both welcome and necessary So that reflects my own particular paranoys about having a nearly 10-year-old son and a 7-year-old daughter and just witnessing the way that they both thrive in those environments and are utterly sucked into them And it's also with an awareness like I'm sure many of us have about just that constant twitch about your devices and how you deal with social media And I'm someone who thrives on that for my work, I have to inhabit these spaces and do so sometimes with good grace and good will but I'm also aware of the pressures that bring and genuinely concerned for my kids generation how much more accelerated that might become So I think it's possible that in tandem with technological innovation which Scotland is really well placed for, we're also one of the major things that we sell ourselves on is our natural environment and wilderness and the lack of tech interface that they escape from that I can see that being a big face-off in terms of values, the need for solitude and retreat versus the need to stay connected are going to be pivotal areas of conflict I think societally And like Chris, I think there's going to be all kinds of issues to do with the difference between urban and rural environments and the impact that technology has on each of them And the idea of right now which we have as our countryside as places of retreat and privilege for many is going to be up for grabs and there's a whole new legal and ethical framework that we have to consider about airspace above land that's not inhabited and who has rights of access to that One more story, is that okay? This one is slightly compromised by the childcare emergency today but I'll give it my best shot It's called karmic payback I got a karma health tracker for my 16th birthday says former accountant, she's been made unemployed because my accountancy is no longer a valid profession and data generation campaigner Agnieszka Wiesniewski I love the sense of knowledge and control I had about my own body and mind Like most users of the era, she didn't give a thought to what happened to the information collected by the app or who had access to it My thinking was why on earth would anyone else be interested in what harm could it possibly do sister 30 year old It was all about me, I was proud of my health rating and I loved that my karma seemed to know exactly what I needed before I did When I began meditation and my pulse rate and breathing changed I began to get recommendations for prayer bowls and herbal teas, it was great Some people find that stuff creepy but I felt understood and empowered and I felt safe In our early 20s Wiesniewski signed up for an experimental range of underarm implants in tandem with an individualised wellbeing plan targeted at the top fitness bracket of karma users The device was so discreet I forgot it was even there and the health plan benefits seemed like payback for physical effort and attention to diet as well as a form of insurance for the future says Wiesniewski I got privileged access to alternative therapies and new dietary innovations based upon my excellent health stats and in return I paid modest fees, talked it up on social media networks and didn't ask questions about my data I confess I was one of the health elite The mother of two began to get concerned shortly after a miscarriage and subsequent divorce three years ago I was struggling to cope, I stopped running and going to the gym and started putting on weight To begin with the karma seemed to respond supportively, take some time out, accept a complimentary treatment on us, it felt good As Wiesniewski's activity stats fell below elite health level she noticed the sharply rising costs of access to treatments and a marked change in tone Ironically at the time I most needed support to deal with stress and anxiety and grief I started to be denied access to therapeutic support because I wasn't investing enough in my own health I entered the karma programme at the top health rating as a young healthy woman so for ten years it never really occurred to me that these services were like gated communities I felt they were my right because I was working so hard The technological applications within public health are already well established and have built upon private sector innovations Last year the Royal College of Physicians backed a rollout of discrete implants for patients with acute physical and mental health conditions such as bi polarity and diabetes They do save lives says RCP director Norma Blaine and they help us to target interventions efficiently when and where they are most needed Wiesniewski continues to be ambivalent, I hate the idea that an algorithm determines what's a reasonable length in nature of response to a traumatic life event And it feels like a violation that karma has a record of every time I've cried, slept, got angry, danced, all the fluctuations in my way even the birth of my children It's all in there says Wiesniewski Most of this isn't official medical history with all the confidentiality that comes with that but it's out there in the world now And private businesses are building business models and deterring access to services based upon my personal grief and effort and that of millions of others So that was one of the things that's been a revelation to me in getting prepped for this is the extent of datification of our lives and our total lack of awareness about how much we give away of ourselves And the difference between data that is private and data that is anonymous I mean I think right now we have a feeling that so long as we can't be named as the individuals attached to the pieces of data it doesn't have any implications for us And in fact it does because the pooling of mass amounts of data is really one of the key ways in which not only private businesses but actually innovative public services are going to be determined on the basis of big data So smart energy networks, smart traffic networks are going to be determined on the basis of all this information But how it gets used is currently not something we have any control or awareness of And so I think right now, not in 2030, we have to start thinking about data generators and data users and data exploiters and that analysts And where the power lies in those relationships because that's already happening now, that's not futuristic and it's happening in ways that are not transparent to us as individuals or as societies If I could just round up with a couple of thoughts would that be okay? So these do reflect my fears and paranoias to some extent but I'm also aware of the tremendous benefits and liberations of technological change on a purely individual basis As a musician, as someone who makes a living from creative output and how that's transformed my life as a maker I'm now able to sample, record, edit, do all kinds of creative work in my kitchen that would have been inconceivable even 10 years ago I'm able to communicate with people in many parts of the world and as one individual niche folk market maker I have a reach that's beyond anything I could have imagined when I was at high school And that feels liberating and it feels meaningful in each of those connections with people One of the things that concerns me is that most of our concepts of entrepreneurship are based upon the idea of intellectual copyright And of having an idea that you have ownership of and can sell and exploit And actually the experience of musicians over the past 10 and 15 years, I think, raises some questions about whether or not that's a valuable concept moving forward It might seem trite but the transition from making CDs for example to digital distribution of music means effectively for someone like me That my music effectively has no value in itself, it's mostly streamed on platforms that earn me no income or stream for free On platforms like YouTube where no income is generated at all from that And I think that's both exciting because I think it opens up the possibility that what it is to be a creative person is not an elite profession Where that's your exclusive identity because now what happens is my kids make music on GarageBand at home They make some pretty good music if I'm honest And the possibilities of, like Betty, of realising your own creative potential are written to the way that we live our lives And give our lives meaning when we make something we feel purposeful and meaningful But I think it does put in Jeopardy these individual classes of creative having one singular identity as a creator And I think developments in 3D printing for example, the whole move towards being able to print up body parts These are all things that are happening and will certainly be commonplace by 2030 It's conceivable that we'll no longer be shipping stuff from abroad We'll be printing stuff and making stuff here in response to designs that are available through free Commons leases So there's massive implications for global trade and massive implications for what it is to own the copyright in an idea And I think what's happened to the music industry in terms of not being able to hang on to your rights as a maker Is about to happen to everything, to all the physical objects that we see and to many other innovations in medicine and technology It's going to become harder to hold on to your rights So I think actually there are huge questions about ownership and what it is to be entrepreneurial in general And one final thing, the concept of entrepreneurship, going back to Betty's story I think if I could just mention one tiny little bit of art that I love that was a Scottish made bit of art that opens up this question It was a little bit of art I saw at the city art centre in an exhibit in 2001 by George Wiley, the paper boat man He's the man who sailed the paper boat up the Clyde He had a total little bit of art and it's a copy of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations with a steel rod through the middle of it And we plaque at the bottom that says Adam also wrote the theory of moral sentiments And these two books were his key works and they express different views of what human potential is The one is a book about economics and the one is a book about ethics and compassion and what we would call empathy now I think the idea of entrepreneurship where the profit making motive isn't the only one that might be a driving force for people And I think the automation of labour and the freeing up of time opens up the possibility that people may be willing to innovate for reasons that have nothing to do with commercial gain So on balance I'm hopeful but I'm also a little bit scared