The Cabaret Of Dangerous Ideas

Join The Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas and challenge your preconceptions on hot button issues!

No Copyright, No Problem?

Is copyright necessary? Does it hinder or does it help? What would happen if there was no copyright? Without it, who benefits and who loses? Is copyright just for large corporations? Or does copyright also serve the interests of individual creators (artists, writers, musicians) more effectively than we might think?
Join Smita Kheria, intellectual property law expert (The University of Edinburgh), to find out whether copyright has a positive role to play, or whether we could live without it in today’s post-digital society.
Creators and consumers, professionals and amateurs, rights holders and pirates, are all welcome!

OK Computer or Paranoid Android?

Psychologist Thusha Rajendran (Heriot-Watt University) tackles controversies around new technologies. Will our future be utopian or dystopian? Do our digital lives allow us to be true to ourselves, or are we suffering an identity crisis? Can iPads damage your children’s brains? Will robots take our jobs? Can you fall in love with your operating system? Can AI learn about aesthetics and style? Can you form a real attachment to your robot dog? Is it worth chipping yourself? What do these technologies mean for our evolution and what do our techno-fears reveal about us?

Build Your Own Football Club?

Have you taken your team to the Champions League Final in Football Manager? Is this all it takes to go pro? Mason Robbins (The University of Edinburgh – FC Barcelona partnership) reckons it might be. You’ll get to make all the decisions involved with building a €1 billion football club. Will your digital nous help you rake in the cash? Will you nail that all-important partnership? Will Brexit wreck the lot? Come and do your best – or your worst...