Presentation James Williams – Freedom of Attention

Can We Trust in Code? It is a pressing question in the current technology debate. For our Sogeti Summit 2018 we gathered some of the most visionary speakers to share their insights around this topic. This time we want to share the idea and vision from James Williams – ‘Freedom of Attention’.

About James Williams

James Williams is an author and technology critic. He worked at Google for over ten years, where he received the Founder’s Award, the company’s highest honor. Subsequently, he earned a PhD from the University of Oxford, where his work focused on philosophical and ethical questions involving user attention and persuasion in technology design. In 2017 he received the inaugural Nine Dots Prize, a major international literary award, which led to the publication of his first book, ‘Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy,’ which The Observer has hailed as ‘a landmark book.’ A frequent commentator on technology issues in the media, James is also a co-founder of the Time Well Spent campaign, has been a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge, and is a consultant for companies, nonprofits, and governments.

About the ‘In Code We Trust’ events

‘In Code We Trust’ is the second report in our new research theme “Digital Happiness”. Two recent deep dives with a group of IT Executives and visionary speakers gave us more insights in how Trust and Code are going to evolve. We’ll share the videos recorded at these meetings that we’ve organized in the coming months. Both in the US (Chicago) and Europe (Amsterdam) business executives, media experts and academia shared their views on the massive transformative impact of digital technologies. We are grateful for their input and inspiration which guided us in our report ‘In Code We Trust’ which you can download here.