Organized by ITMO University and “A piece of salt” debating club (“Schepotka Soli”) this meeting brought together speakers from leading universities and St. Petersburg for-profit companies. Some 13 experts in natural and social sciences as well as specialists in humanities, entrepreneurs and engineers shared their presentations connected with current state of science, modern technologies and their importance for mankind.
For example, Artur Perevalov, engineer of St. Petersburg Ioffe Institute, talked about the future of electric energy generation and consumption and explained nuclear fusion in simple terms. Ivan Martynov, VRLF`s developer, declared that virtual reality will be extremely persuasive very soon. Thus it will be very easy for computers to deceive human sensory organs. Speaking of promising technologies Sergei Boytsov, specialist in digital signal processing, commented on Internet of Things and its main disadvantage: interaction between “tings” depends on their owner too much. It won`t work unless this system bases on a for-profit company. Vitaly Borok, mathematician and IT entrepreneur, urged to stop taking science on truth because a statement could be false even if it was declared by an authoritative researcher.
According to Aleksey Ezhikov, business advisor, currently technologies and media develop exponentially. However it is not dangerous.
“We don`t understand how everything develop and what exactly has changed. So what is to be done? The answer is, “Forget it and move on.” Thanks to technologies we strike towards unexpected and interesting future. Let`s follow this way with fun!”
Kristina Kretsu and Sergei Lepeshov, Social. Science. Technology`s organizers, noted that they tried to make the program various. Thus apart from reports on highly specialized scientific issues the forum included popular science reports presented by specialists in humanities. Through that organizers tried to show a symbiosis of modern exact sciences and social-oriented disciplines.
The next Social. Science. Technology will take place in spring 2016.