Technologies for a better world

Friday, a week ago, I have been in Japan to start off Merck’s seventh Displaying Futures symposium. We launched this annual event to venture a glimpse into the future. With almost 100 participants from very different disciplines, we share every year diverse perspectives on the opportunities for a better world on the impact technologies can have on people and society. This is particularly true for the latter, as Merck is the leading supplier of materials that enables a lot of technologies of the future like for example displays.

Merck’s materials enable the future

This year, the symposium focused on “Digital Transformations” –  an extremely exciting topic! Digitalization is like gravity: It is always and everywhere. It penetrates all areas of our private and business lives. We are always online – round the clock, round the globe. In its business unit Performance Materials, Merck is shaping the Digital Transformation in a special manner. For more than 40 years, we have been the innovation pioneer in the field of liquid crystal displays. LCDs have been crucial to enable this development: when you swipe your fingers across the display of your smartphone, you are most likely setting Merck liquid crystal molecules in motion and, in more and more cases also OLEDs. Without Merck’s materials, mobile communication as we know it today would not be possible. Merck truly makes communication visible.

Vibrant exchange at the panel discussion

Against this background, designers, architects, artists, scientists and experts in robotics and artificial intelligence lively discussed the following questions and many more: Which interaction between people and displays do experts expect to happen in the future? Which changes can they already now predict will occur in their own fields? How will these changes influence the development of displays? And how can displays change our daily lives and habits – and vice versa? Where are digital and analogue worlds in opposition to each other? And where can new approaches for connecting opposing worlds be found?

Just to convey an impression of the speakers who attended this year’s Displaying Futures symposium:

• Neil Harbisson, an artist and cyborg activist best known for having an antenna implanted in his skull recognised as cyborg by a government. His antenna allows him to perceive visible and invisible colours via sound waves. His artworks investigates the relationship between colour and sound and experiment with the boundaries of human perception: “I wanted to use technology, but I didn‘t want to wear technology. I wanted to become technology.”

• Tomotaka Takahashi, one of Japan’s leading experts on robotics and founder of ROBO GARAGE Co., LTD., highlighted the potential of robots and the roles they might play in people’s everyday lives in the future: “There’s a misunderstanding about robots. No housemaid robots forever. We will see a co-existing with robots. These devices will be very close to a human.“
• Fiona Raby, one of the heads behind the design duo Dunne & Raby, presented how the firm approaches the challenges posed by new technologies and digital transformations, and discussed the part played by design in emerging technologies: “Of course, we have the obsession with humanoid robots. There is a strong desire to make robots look like humans.“
• Anab Jain, one of the co-founder of London-based design studio Superflux, outlined via videoconference the firm’s design process, and how it responds to current digital, societal, cultural and technological changes. She also gave her views on what she considers to be today’s core topics and challenges in the fields of technology and design.