Who benefits from and is in charge of new technology? What could a life with less rather than more technological innovation be like?

Taking ideas of traditional Luddism as a point for departure, Jessica Bland, Dougald Hine, Dave King (Luddites200) and Jay Springett will join Huw Lemmey to discuss the possibilities for engaging with new technologies and what our relationships to these technologies have become now that it is increasingly difficult to truly “switch off”.

Jessica Bland is a technology futures analyst at Nesta. She researches and writes about emerging technology, with particular interests in open science, new foresight methods and science fiction. She also runs Nesta’s Hot Topics events. She was previously senior policy advisor at the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science, where she led the 2012 ‘Science as an open enterprise’ study. She writes for the recently set up ‘Political Science’ blog on guardian.co.uk.

Dougald Hine is a writer and social thinker who has been responsible for creating a series of organisations, including the School of Everything, the civic ideas agency Spacemakers, and the Dark Mountain Project,  a cultural forum for investigating the converging crises of climate change, resource scarcity and economic instability.

Luddites200 is an ad hoc group of admirers of the Luddites, radical historians and activists on issues connected to technology.   The group is developing a neo-Luddite politics of technology for the 21st century. Dave King is a former scientist who has been writing and campaigning on the politics of genetics and reproductive technologies since 1990.

Jay Springett is a Musician, Photographer, Philosopher, and Luddite. He is concerned primarily with humans, technology, infrastructure, and the unseen intersection points of how these things keep us alive. He specializes in small one-man projects that other people can get involved with. Jay is a member of EdgeRyders (a distributed thinktank incubated by the Council of Europe), co-designer of the visual language of SCIM (Simple Critical Infrastructure Maps) -resiliencemaps.org and is a contributor to the Hexayurt Project an open hardware disaster relief shelter. He also co-curates The Thought Menu: a nomadic talks series, and is passionate about DIY culture.

Huw Lemmey is an artist and writer whose work focuses on digital political culture and post-internet art. He is involved in running the Limazulu project space and has coordinated the Immaterial Labour Isn’t Working project with Auto Italia.