TECH & SOCIETY
Internet as Outrage Machine
A portrait of the internet.
Home of connection and isolation. Community and polarisation. Democracy and mobocracy.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate change: Here, now & urgent
2023: The hottest year ever. Unprecedented number of climate disasters. Record number of hectares lost. A perpetual, "fifth season" is here: the Anthropocene.
TECH & SOCIETY
Technology: Empires of Attention
Information. Entertainment. Anger. Addiction. Hive minds.
Dive into the underbelly of social media.
MEDICINE
Missions Impossible: Meet the Tom Cruise of human medicine
The human body: nature's wonder. Now also a site of engineering marvel.
Biochemist Robert Langer is a pioneer.
TRANSHUMANISM
Transhumanism: Merging human & machine
Imagine. The Cyborg. Metahuman. Ubermensch. H+.
Superhuman... or de-humanised?
AI
AI: Enter the Machine Divine
Powerful. Exciting. Disturbing. Generative AI has taken the world by storm.
How will humanity respond to its own creation?
TECH & SOCIETY
Automation anxiety: Tech, jobs & the future of work
Knitting needles to power looms. Horse-drawn carriages to cars. Tech has always reshaped work. Now AI is doing the same. But what makes it tectonically different?
TECH & SOCIETY
Ex Machina: The future of human nature
As machines mimic better and better, and artificial intelligence surpasses the human kind, what does it mean to be human?
GENE EDITING
What age would you choose to be?
The science & politics of age reversal. How audacious minds are questioning the fundamentals of life.
PSYCHEDELICS
3 worlds: Psychedelics, stress, serotonin
The science of psychedelics is a re-emerging field. Dangerous, destabilising.
Or frontier methods of healing?
BIG PICTURE
Hot, Flat. And Split: A world on fire
Hyper connectivity. Angry nature. Geopolitics in a tailspin.
We’re facing simultaneous tipping points.
FILM
Time for a constitution for technology?
As tech becomes the new 'hand of god' in our lives, what tenets will define how it is governed, deployed, used? Open or closed. Exclusive or inclusive. Extractive or sustainable. Which values will win?
SNAPSHOTS
SYNAPSE 2024 | SNAPSHOTS
Incisive. Insightful. Visually stimulating. A mind-expanding weekend.
CONFERENCE FILM
Welcome to SYNAPSE | A weekend of life-altering perspectives | 2024
This is science & tech as never before. Intersected with society.
GENE EDITING
Age reversal: Fact vs. fiction
Gene therapies. Chemical cocktails. Tried successfully on animals. Are humans next? What questions are at stake?
JOBS
Future of work: An era of turbulence
300 million jobs could be disrupted by AI.
Will technology empower human capital, or endanger it? Will the pie of abundance be shared?
TECH & SOCIETY
Social media: A pocket biography
Imagine the social web as a ship. Access. Connection. Community. Now imagine the shipwreck. Polarisation. Hive minds. Outrage.
QUANTUM
Quantum: Next-gen tech & a new global race
The mind-bending world of atoms and subatomic particles. How it's changing our lives, the world, and perhaps even reality.
NATIONAL SECURITY
War: Tech as the new minefield
Tech is redefining conflict.
A window into the tomorrow wars: Who will be the new terminators of the next battlefields?
CLIMATE CHANGE
Nature, humans, technology: The age of acceleration
As three worlds – climate change, AI, and humans – collide, are atomised, and become polarised: What are we speeding towards?
TECH & SOCIETY
Public Tech: India's great digital leapfrog
Home to the largest digital public infrastructure in the world, India is an advocate of value tech.
But its digital makeover remains an unfinished story.
CONSCIOUSNESS
Consciousness: The watcher, the knower, the spirit self
How the “self” emerges from hard matter remains an open question. Will science crack the code of consciousness, or do the old savants have the answers?
TRANSHUMANISM
Post-humans & techno-utopias: Edgy psyche of Silicon Valley
Meet the TESCREALs: Tech czars who believe there is nothing fixed about being human. Find out how they see the future of the world. And the human race
PSYCHEDELICS
Psychedelics: Miracle Molecules
The human brain, a place of mystery.
Do psychedelics hold the key?
TECH & SOCIETY
Tech as moral mirror: The new social dilemmas
Technology is forcing a human reckoning.
What's your score on the tech ethics test?
CREATIVITY
Machines like me: Art in the age of AI
Nothing you see in this film is real.
Can human creativity survive the era of AI?
AI
AI: How to train a dragon
A great debate rages.
Is AI a force multiplier for humans? Or an existential threat for the species that can mimic, replicate – and ultimately replace us?
HEALTH & TECH
Health: The coming tech-tonic shifts
Virtual doctors. Digital twins. Reactive to preventive. Mass to personalised.
What are the frontiers of health tech? Do they represent utopia or dystopia?
