What If the Future Isn’t as Grim as the Headlines Suggest?

Spend enough time reading the news and the future can start to look bleak. Artificial intelligence taking jobs. Surveillance technology creeping into daily life. Social media shaping how we think and behave.

But what if that isn’t the full picture?

At Bath Digital Festival, applied futurist Tom Cheesewright will take a step back from the daily noise to look at how technology actually evolves, and why many of the innovations we worry about today may end up creating opportunities we can barely imagine.

Tom’s job is, quite literally, to help people think about tomorrow. As an applied futurist, he works with organisations around the world to help leaders understand what the future might look like and how to respond to it. That might mean helping a board see where their industry is heading, helping a company explain change to its workforce, or helping brands communicate the bigger story of where technology is taking us.

His clients include more than 30 of the Global 500, as well as organisations such as NASA, and he has become a familiar public voice explaining how emerging technologies are reshaping the world. With thousands of media appearances behind him, Tom regularly appears across television, radio and national press, and is currently the resident expert on BBC Radio 4’s Dough. His commentary has also appeared on programmes such as BBC Breakfast, Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch, You and Yours and The Big Questions, as well as in national newspapers.

He is also the author of several books exploring the future of technology and society, bringing a rare mix of strategic insight and storytelling to the stage.

For Bath Digital Festival’s “What If?” theme, Tom will explore the tension between technological optimism and public anxiety. What if the technologies we worry about most today turn out to be the ones that unlock the next wave of creativity and productivity? What if the real breakthroughs are not just about faster processors or smarter algorithms, but about designing technology that feels natural to use?

From augmented reality to artificial intelligence, Tom will look at how innovation actually unfolds, why many “failed” technologies are simply experiments that arrived too early, and how the next generation of interfaces could reshape how we interact with the digital world.

If you’ve ever wondered how tomorrow’s technology becomes today’s everyday reality, this talk offers a chance to step back from the hype cycle and see the bigger picture.

Because the future rarely arrives in the way we expect. And sometimes the most interesting question isn’t what happens next.

It’s what if we’re looking at it the wrong way.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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