For three years as a Gresham Professor I had the extraordinary privilege of delivering public lectures to an in person audience in the beautiful surroundings of Barnard’s Inn Hall and to a global audience on YouTube. One can cover a lot of ground in nineteen forty-five minute talks. But when I settled on the topic of the turbulent relationship between technology and society throughout history (and in the future), it rapidly became clear that we would need to bring it to life differently – and that I would need help from my friends.
For the last few months, I and the team at Gresham have been working on a series of documentaries that explore tech’s impact on art, politics and the environment – and their impact on tech. I’ve developed new skills: turning my written ideas into a shooting script, doing impromptu pieces to camera when opportunities for footage were too good to miss, and finally nailing how to do makeup that stays put for several hours during one of several heatwaves.
My fellow Gresham Professors are the stars of these shows, along with other experts whom I’m proud to call friends: Melissa Lane on ancient definitions of tech and art and the use and misuse of tech in Ancient Greek politics (and Amy Smith with a live demonstration of this tech in action!); Chris Lintott on space tech, geopolitics, and the Lunar Society; Jane Shaw on free thinking in the Enlightenment; Ronald Hutton on the impact of printing; Leslie Thomas KC on tech regulation and free speech; Vasilis Katos on Smart Cities; Llewelyn Morgan on the use of tech to decode ancient literature.
We’ve had access to some incredible locations, including the Senate House Library and Institute of Classical Studies at the University of London, Reading University’s Ure Museum of Archaeology, Oxford’s Museum of the History of Science, and the brand new Security Operations Centre (SOC) of the Future at Bournemouth University.
There’s a lot of work still to be done: edits of the footage that tell the stories and still make sense; more pieces to camera and linking voiceover. But I’m already really excited by what we have to show you. Just two of my ‘pinch me’ moments so far: being allowed by the team at Harris Manchester College to hold a pair of spectacles believed to have been worn by Enlightenment scientist and radical dissenter Joseph Priestley; and, last but by no means least, creating a new piece of music from old power loom weaving patterns with my super great mate Milton Mermikides.
Check back here for further updates!
