Who will be the winners and losers in our digital society?

The University of Cambridge today launches its ‘Spotlight on Digital Society’, showcasing world leading research that examines the impact of digital technologies on our society. The theme draws on Cambridge’s Public Policy and Big Data Strategic Research Initiatives and its Digital Humanities Network.

The University's research magazine, Research Horizons, will highlight areas as diverse as cybercrime, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, and how to determine the authenticity of citizen journalism footage. Features in this edition, which will be released over the coming month, include:

Could cryptocurrency help the ‘bottom billion’?
Researchers at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance are looking at whether digital currencies might help the world’s poorest poor, many of whom have no access to a bank account and yet depend on being able to transfer money across borders.

The accidental witness
Smartphones and social media have made it easy for accidental witnesses to capture and share violations and crimes. But how can we tell what’s real and what’s fake? Ella McPherson (Sociology) is developing an automated tool, ‘The Whistle’, to help verify the authenticity of digital evidence.

Making the hidden visible
Despite being founded on ideals of freedom and openness, the internet is under attack from state-sponsored censorship. Sheharbano Khattak (Computer Laboratory) is leading a research project that aims to uncover the scale and consequences of this censorship.

The digital identity crisis
Many of us see our privacy as a basic right. But in the digital world of app-addiction, geolocation tracking and social oversharing, some may have cause to wonder if that right is steadily and sometimes willingly being eroded away. David Erdos (Law) explores the nature of data protection.

Computer says yes! (But is it right?)
Computers that learn for themselves are with us now. As they become more common in ‘high-stakes’ applications like robotic surgery, terrorism detection and driverless cars, Roberto Cipolla and Zoubin Ghahramani and Adrian Weller (Engineering) ask what can be done to make sure we can trust them.

This year’s Cambridge Festival of Ideas (17-30 October) will see speakers tackle what it means to live in a digital society. These include:

Who can really say what to whom on the internet?
The internet used to be an open road, with unrestricted access and use, based on trust and community values. But the rapid rise of spam, censorship, site blocking and automated bots now present obstacles in this road, as panellists from the Computer Laboratory will discuss.
Saturday 22 October: 11:00am - 12:30pm

Don't stop moving: Is the digital world friend or foe in fighting a sedentary future?
We have created a world where we move less and we sit more – from our drive to work, to our office desks, to our evening spent on the sofa – and this is damaging our health. Technology has had a clear role in this, but could this same technology come to our rescue? Saturday 22 October: 3:00pm - 4:00pm

Artificial intelligence: Its future and ours
Jaan Tallinn, founding engineer of Skype, leads an expert panel to discuss the implications on society of artificial intelligence, including a screening of the short film ‘Could and should robots feel pain?’.
Saturday 22 October: 7:00pm - 10:00pm

Schröder Lecture: Faust on Facebook, or how we lose track of everything by recording it all
Roberto Simanowski (City University of Hong Kong) argues that we are annihilating present time by permanently archiving it. The literary figure of Faust famously disregards the experience of the moment, and in this lecture Simanowski takes Faust as his starting point for an unsettling tour through the psychological and political implications of mobile media and social networks.
Thursday 20 October: 5:15pm - 6:30pm

Follow the Spotlight on Digital Society and all the latest discussions – and let us know your views – on Twitter at #digitalsociety.