Digital Society Hustings (Glasgow)
Digital technologies are now central to how we access healthcare, jobs, and government services. They connect us, and divide us, they bring great benefits, but also great harms. Yet we rarely talk about how we want them to serve our nations.
This is an election hustings where you can ask the people seeking your vote the questions about digital tech and society.
Join us in calling for a future where digital is central — and where we have a say in how it evolves.
This election hustings for the Scottish Parliament will feature a range of politicians alongside experts and focus on all the impacts of the digital world on society.
The questions we need to discuss as a society include:
How do we get an independent digital news media?
What ethical frameworks should we use in the digital world?
What comes after the high nationalisms that existed in a world of national newspapers, national radio, national education, national television, national literature, now that those are gone? Particularly for the English speaking world?
How do we expand the digital world in Welsh, Gaelic and other minority languages?
Are we at risk of losing access to our cultural history with online and streaming?
How do we preserve our digital patrimony?
How do we tackle Child Sexual Abuse Material and harassment in the online world? Is it simply baked into the tools? Should employees have criminal liability?
What are the consequences of digital society for social trust?
What needs to happen to rebuild it?
Will AI take all our jobs? Is it a problem if it does?
How do we push back against the surveillance workplace, and the gigification of the economy and put people back at the centre?
What forms of political organisation do we need for the new world?
How should the political parties react and change?
What is the relationship of the citizen and the state? How has it been changed by digitisation? Should we be worried? What are civil liberties in an all-digital, joined up state?
What happens if anti-constitutional actors seize control of the state - as has happened in America?
How do we make it possible for people who can't or won't be digital natives to live and thrive in society?
What is 'just enough' internet?
How has digital changed education? What effect is AI having?
What needs to be done to protect childhood? Should children have phones in school? What restrictions should be placed on their online lives?
How do we tackle the epidemic of crime and fraud?
This is a volunteer run event but there are costs - tickets are free but we would be obliged if you would consider making a donation.