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Fascinating and insightful, as well as entertaining.
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Ben Hammersley
- Renowned Futurist, Author, And Digital Thought Leader
- Expertise In Technology And Futurism, With Deep Insight Into The Digital Era And Its Impact on Society
- Visionary Who Can Inspire the Audience To Think Differently About The Future And Embrace Change
Travels From
New York
Ben Hammersley Interview | How to Face the Digital World Without Fear
Understanding the Future Implications of Technology
Ben Hammersley Speaker Biography
One of the world's leading Futurists, Ben Hammersley is the founder and principal of Hammersley Futures, an international strategic forecasting consultancy whose main work is in guiding corporations and governmental agencies to think clearly about the future. The company specializes in how society reacts to technological innovation: including the future of crime and conflict, the changing nature of the workplace and the market, and the new cognitive tools needed to flourish in the coming decades.
Previously Ben was executive editor of WIRED, the writer and presenter of the BBC’s “Cybercrimes with Ben Hammersley” (now on Netflix or Amazon Prime internationally), a war correspondent in Afghanistan, an advisor to the European Commission, a pilot and wilderness medic in the USA, the author of 5 books, and the inventor of the word "Podcast".
Hammersley is the author of the acclaimed book 64 Things You Need To Know Now For Then, a guide to the new concepts of the modern world. His most recent book, Now For Then: How To Face The Digital Future Without Fear, is on the latest ideas in technology, culture, business, and politics. It demystifies the Internet, decodes cyberspace and ushers us through the innovation revolution in which we are all living. Additionally, Hammersley is editor-at-large for WIRED magazine, a columnist for BA Business Life magazine and the Principal of Onwards, Friend, a program that develops science and launch platforms for high-altitude and low-earth orbit. In fact, he is building his own personal satellite.
When Ben Hammersley speaks to audiences, he dissects intricate concepts and developing technologies and adds fascinating stories and analogies to make these topics accessible. While some speakers and pundits use a “doom and gloom” method to scare people about our rapidly developing future, Hammersley employs humor and common sense to illustrate his views. His methods are especially helpful when illustrating that spheres of power and influence have dramatically changed in the last generation, and how most of us employ a way of thinking that doesn’t line up with today’s society—or the future. “Our jobs, our businesses, our institutions and governments, and civic infrastructure, the marketplace, the flow of ideas, wars and the supply chain, are all—to a degree I think most would find terrifying—far more complex and weird than we’re generally aware. This is partly because of a reluctance to truly look, partly because orthodox understandings of the world are deeply culturally embedded, and partly because we lack the cognitive tools to actually do that thinking,” Hammersley says.
A speaker and consultant that can mold to any industry’s needs, Hammersley consults with organizations and corporations about trends, technology, and security, whether it’s in travel, financial services, human resources or government. But he doesn’t just talk to the big guys; he also consults with smaller associations and organizations. Through detailed research, he will sort through the issues troubling you, find your strengths, and devise a completely customized speech and action plan that will help your organization move forward. He’ll share what holds your company back, what or who the disrupters are in your sector and exactly how you to navigate, succeed and thrive—in the future.
For more information on Ben Hammersley, please contact Executive Speakers Bureau at 901.754.9404.
Cut Through The Clutter: This is what you (actually) need to know (or ignore) about the future
Futurists are full of it. Most of their predictions are based on buzzwords, misunderstood technologies, and bandwagons they never fail to leap aboard, all dressed up with concept art, movie references, and a fear of missing out. These can be entertaining, but are they useful? Helpful? No.
In this, the other kind of future talk, Ben Hammersley will discuss the latest fads and fashions, and examine the technologies for what they actually are and what they can do. He'll show what is real and what is simply hope, hype, or downright fraud. By reminding us that the heart of strategy is what we choose not to do, will guide the audience to a deeper, more knowledgeable, and more powerful understanding of the world to come.
Everything you think about Innovation is wrong
For something that holds the key to prosperity and success in the 21st Century, it is upsetting to realize that we’ve been doing it wrong. We think about innovation in the wrong way. We’ve been using the wrong words, paying attention to the wrong things, and retelling the same, old, wrong, and misleading stories. True innovation does not mean embracing the latest technological buzzword and trying to leap five years into the future with the help of an AI or a blockchain. It’s not dependent on a small and expensive class of technowizards, or magazine-cover masters of the universe. Instead, innovation is a skill and a mindset that can be learned by anyone. It’s a continual process that truly cutting-edge organizations - from multinational e-commerce conglomerates to that great new dumpling place down the street - can develop within every single member of staff. These talks show the true historical and cultural complexities of innovation and teach the audiences how to apply those lessons to their daily practices. For any organization, industry, or individual who wants to be better tomorrow than they are today, and who suspects that the answer isn’t necessarily in the new shiny and disruptive tech, this topic will be inspirational, practical, and calmly life-changing.
The Future of Work, the Workplace, and the Place of Work
For all the technological advances of the past 20 years, and the promises of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the other super-power-giving technologies of the 2020s, the way we work today hasn’t changed for a hundred years. The average knowledge worker's desk is a little different from a Victorian clerk’s. Their office would be a familiar place for their grandparents. But as we become more aware of the challenges of the coming decade - with its commercial and cultural upheavals already apparent - we’re realizing that now is the time to reassess not only the very way we work but also the place in which we do it. From the realization that our company’s email culture is making us stupid and that open-plan offices actually reduce collaboration, to the skills we need to work with non-human colleagues, and the concept of cognitive architecture, this talk helps organizations and individuals who want to work smarter, and more successfully, in the 2020s understand what is happening to the workplace, and how they can make changes today that will future-proof them for tomorrow.
SKILLS FOR FUTURE LEADERS
We all know the world is changing. And many can give examples of the technologies or trends that are contributing to that change. But that is not the whole picture. In this topic, we teach audiences about the skills, techniques, and cognitive tools that leaders need to both understand those changes and shape their own future. Ideal for executive learning and development programs, or thought-leader positioning customer events, these keynotes are consistently rated as life-changing, with plenty of actionable takeaways for the audience. This topic also extends well into subsequent break-outs and workshop sessions, which can be provided.
THE SHAPE OF THE POST-DIGITAL WORLD
With so much change, so many disruptions and innovations, transforming the culture, systems, and politics of the world we grew up in, into the world of the 2020s, we have found that most of our clients have a mental model of the world that is, if not entirely out of date, then dangerously incomplete. In this topic, we show the workings and the shape of the interconnected, interdependent, networked, co-arisen modern world, and how it affects the audience’s business and lives. From youth culture in Brazil to high-speed rail in China, Russian postmodern foreign policy to non-human corporations, weaponized memetic infections to European nationalism, solar punk to climate mitigation to shadow economies, we provide a true grounding in today, without which you cannot possibly plan for tomorrow. This is especially appreciated by c-suite audiences and has been a repeated hit at evening events with partners and spouses.
COGNITIVE RISK AND THE NATURE OF THREAT
We are all bringing yesterday’s war to today’s battlefield. In the modernity of today's world, we have a profound misunderstanding of the nature of geopolitical, commercial, and personal threats. It isn’t kinetics that will get us, but confusion. The post-modern asymmetric reaction to the extreme commercial and military hegemony of the West, or the quasi-monopoly power of the large corporation is no longer one of physical violence, but of memetic infection, and purposeful, weaponized, confusion. For these audiences, leadership, and strategy, is the art of making the best decisions with the knowledge available. But making those decisions requires accurate data, clear analysis, and accurate thinking, without interference. In this talk, we detail how the final line of risk is the individual executive’s ability to think clearly, how this is under a specific targeted attack, and how to defend against that. This topic is of deep interest to multinational top-tier executives, or those being shaped into becoming so. It can also include follow-up reading and online sessions.
