Ageing well
What do we really want?
Most of us will get old; we may well become frail and socially isolated. But many will live long productive lives. So what do we want as we age? Lifestyle? Health? Community? Income? Who decides? Who should decide?
Resistance and persistence
Will we ever see the end of disease? Can the social inequities in health ever be eliminated? If not, what does the future of medicine look like? What might ‘good health’ mean to the next generation?
The future
Will we shape or be shaped?
Direct human connection is critical to fostering an empathic framework for building our thoughts, decisions, relationships, culture and society. How do we craft a future that maintains connections while leveraging technological advancement and ensuring the goals and uses of Artificial Intelligence remain human-centric?
Has Global Warming Melted Our Brains?
Why do some people deny the science of climate change? How do the scientists get their message out to such people? How does the way information is packaged affect the way we respond to it? Our relations with each other and the environment are inherently messy. We cannot solve our problems without engaging as many people as possible, regardless of their opinions. One of the world’s best science communicators gives us some clues in how to do this and make progress for everyone’s benefit.
The Joy MacLennan Oration: Resilience
In wide-ranging discussion with Julianne Siggins from Anglicare, and members of the audience, Anne Deveson explores the idea of resilience, from her own personal experience in her family, as well as her long career in journalism, writing and film-making. What does resilience actually mean? How can you develop it? Who can you rely on when the going gets tough?
Ideas Whose Time Has Come: from Cosmology to Cancer
From dark energy to the Higgs boson, from cancer folklore to synthetic biology: great ideas often languish in obscurity until, decades later, they burst into relevance. World-renowned physicist, best-selling author, and 2013 Adelaide Festival of Ideas dedicatee, Professor Paul Davies, shares some of the more exciting and significant examples that revolutionising science today, and asks: “what else lies in the dusty storehouse of human ideas that may yet transform our future”? In this enlightening presentation, he traverses the spaces between cosmology, computation and information theory, and cell biology to propose a unique view on the way cancer could be understood and ultimately treated. Following the talk, Prof Davies engages in fascinating conversation with Phillip Adams. Introduction to the session by Robert Phiddian, Chair of the AFOI Advisory Committee.
