Bringing Future Flight to Life: Debating the Potential Impacts on Society

Location
Online - a zoom link will be sent to you following registration
Dates
Wednesday 9 November 2022 (19:00-20:30)
future-flight-louise-reardon

This online event is an opportunity for attendees to learn more about future flight technologies and the potential implications for society.

Increasing investment is going into developing ‘future flight’ technologies including, air taxis that can transport you across the sky within a city or from town to town, and remote piloted drones capable of carrying tonnes of goods from one end of the country to another.

These technologies may be technically viable as early as 2030 and are potentially transformative to where, and how, we live our lives. However, these technologies won’t be implementable unless they are desirable and acceptable to the public.

This interactive online session will explore and debate the potential positive and negative implications of these technologies on different groups, and the issues that need to be addressed before these technologies can be introduced.

The event will include:

  • An overview of future flight technologies and their potential uses (approx. 15 minutes)
  • An interactive activity drawing on potential future real-world scenarios to help session attendees consider what the implications of future flight technologies might be for them and their communities (approx. 45 minutes)
  • Connecting back to our research – exploring how attendee concerns link to those identified in on-going research led by the University of Birmingham (approx. 15 minutes)

Speakers:

Led by Fern Elsdon-Baker, Louise Reardon and Will Mason-Wilkes of ISTEMMiCS, University of Birmingham; members of the UK Research and Innovation Future Flight Challenge social science research team. 

Anyone is welcome to attend. Free online registration required.

This event is part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science. Spanning the months of October and November a range of interactive virtual and physical events will be free and open to the public.