Insights April 27th, 2016

J. Doyne Farmer is an American complex systems scientist and entrepreneur with interests in chaos theory, complexity and econophysics. He is a Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, where he is Director of Complexity Economics at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, and is also an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His current research is on complexity economics, focusing on systemic risk in financial markets and technological progress. During his career he has made important contributions to complex systems, chaos, artificial life, theoretical biology, time series forecasting and econophysics. He co-founded Prediction Company, one of the first companies to do fully automated quantitative trading. While a graduate student he led a group that called itself Eudaemonic Enterprises and built the first wearable digital computer, which was used to beat the game of roulette. (bio taken from Wikipedia)
Technological advancements are fundamental to our existence, and a major driver of economic growth. While technology is all around us, in many ways we understand the evolution of dinosaurs better than we understand the evolution of technology. Nonetheless, there are several intriguing laws for technological progress whose origins are not well understood. Professor Doyne Farmer, Director of the Complexity Economics Programme at The Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School will show how these make it possible to predict the cost of future technologies and assess how accurate such predictions are.
He will also consider ways of viewing the relationship between technologies in ecological terms, and show the insight this brings to economic growth.

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Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker that researches, speaks, and writes about the future of work, how technology is affecting the workplace, how workers are adapting, the sharing economy, and how the world is evolving. He appears at conferences in Canada, USA, UK, and Europe. Email him to book him for your radio, TV show, or conference.

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Nikolas Badminton

Nikolas Badminton is the Chief Futurist of the Futurist Think Tank. He is world-renowned futurist speaker, a Fellow of The RSA (FRSA), a media personality, and has worked with over 400 of the world’s most impactful companies to establish strategic foresight capabilities, identify trends shaping our world, help anticipate unforeseen risks, and design equitable futures for all. In his new book – ‘Facing Our Futures’ – he challenges short-term thinking and provides executives and organizations with the foundations for futures design and the tools to ignite curiosity, create a framework for futures exploration, and shift their mindset from what is to WHAT IF…

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