Voices in London

David Orban

The Author
David Orban
David Orban is an entrepreneur, a member of the Faculty of, and Advisor to the Singularity University, an interdisciplinary university whose mission is to assemble, educate and inspire leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies in order to address humanity’s grand challenges. David is the Founder of Network Society Research, a London based global non-profit, creating a vision and analytical tools to allow individuals, enterprises and the society at large to deal positively with the unstoppable change towards decentralized and distributed technologies disrupting the centralized and hierarchical functions of the Nation State. David cuts across the limits of deep specialization to contribute to the new renaissance. He explains, “My vision is at the crossroads of technology and society as defined by their co-evolution.” David Orban’s personal motto is, “What is the question I should be asking?” This concept is his vehicle to accelerating cycles of invention and innovation in order to build the new world ahead.
Memetic Ambitions
Memetics is the study of evolution of culture and ideas, in all their expressions. Science, technology, philosophy, all evolve, and our tools for creating, evaluating, agreeing on and implementing ideas with them. We have huge challenges ahead of us, and the best tools are science and reason to face, solve, and overcome them. It is at the same time important to recognize that art, poetry, emotions are also part of culture, and they evolve memetically as well. Emotions and reason are not in...Read more
David Orban11 Aug 2019
Telepresence All Around
What do you do when you have to speak at two conferences in distant cities at the same time? If you are me, you hire a mime, and stick an iPad on his head, to be your remote body. Telepresence helps in many ways, amplifying our interactions through space and time. From robotic surgeries, to deep structures of online communities and space exploration, we have created tools that are going to enhance and extend the way we experience the world. [Watch the full video of The Context S01E07 on...Read more
David Orban04 Aug 2019
Digital Governance
In the 21st century, all regulations and all governance should either be or aim to be digital, as soon as possible. What does that mean? What are the implications? What is the context of regulations and governance being digital? We went through digital transformations many times. It started with the first computers in the fifties sixties, or with the personal computer revolution in the 80s or with the Internet in the 90s? It could be claimed that it is only now with blockchain based smart...Read more
David Orban28 Jul 2019
Going To Space
Aren’t we spoiled that just 50 years after the Moon landing many of us pretend that space travel should be ubiquitous? The history of innovation is not linear. After an idea becomes applicable, and before it spreads reliably, and affordably to a large number of people, there can pass a lot of time. It took 500 years after Leonardo invented it, for helicopters to be practical. It took hundreds of years for transatlantic travel to be safe after Columbus discovered America. But if you want...Read more
David Orban21 Jul 2019
Dangerous Demagoguery
Our decreasing ability to interpret theworld makes usinsecure,anguished, and vulnerable. If we meet somebody who says "Don’t worry. Yes, there are a lot of things that you don’t know. The world is dangerous, but I have the answers. It doesn’t matter how complex the world appears. I have simple answers to the problems that you perceive,” that person is going to be very attractive and we will be temptedto trust that person. We will want to delegate the decisions that we...Read more
David Orban14 Jul 2019
21st Century Life Design Skills
The acceleration of technological change exposes each of us to challenges that we have to be able to face. The tools and skills that traditional education provides us are inadequate. We could rely on them to support us during our life in the past. Today we need to keep learning new skills and put them to work rapidly, iterating the process, at every age. I create content with the aim of building a shared understanding about the most important challenges for humankind. Do you want to know the...Read more
David Orban07 Jul 2019
Tesla May Stop Selling Cars
Cars on the Tesla Network will generate $20K per year for ten years according to Elon Musk. Once Full Self Driving is available, it won’t make sense selling them to you. Also, what if the real Tesla products are not cars, or systems for solar energy generation and storage, but the Gigafactories themselves? Welcome to episode two of The Context. Today I want to talk to you about Tesla and I want to tell you what is the context for what Tesla is trying to accomplish. Of course, all of us...Read more
David Orban30 Jun 2019
The Context
I’m launching a new video series, entitled The Context, to give a deeper understanding of the implications of current events, and technologies shaping the world. The first episode is about Libra. Welcome to The Context this week. We are going to look at what is the context for Libra, the digital payment system announced by Facebook that is going to launch in 2020. But of course this is the first episode of this new weekly video series. So it is important that I explained to you a little...Read more
David Orban23 Jun 2019
Don’t Be Afraid! The financial system is changing
I’ve been interviewed in The Times of Malta, in occasion of the Malta AI & Blockchain Summit that is held on May 23-24, 2019 You are one of the early adopters of blockchain. Fast-forward to today – would you say that blockchain has disrupted technology and society in an anticipated manner? It is a common feature of exponential technological change that its impact is overestimated in the short run and underestimate in the long run, even by experts. Blockchain is the same: those...Read more
David Orban19 May 2019
Technology generates the society of the future
In an interview with Bruno Ruffilli for TuttoScienze of La Stampa, we talked about how technological progress can generate new degrees of freedom. "Technology, a misunderstood friend” Orban: it’s generating the society of the future by Bruno Ruffilli David Orban, 53, Hungarian, is a teacher at the Singularity University, which assists companies in the path of innovation. He founded Network Society Research, where decentralized technologies are studied and distributed, like the...Read more
David Orban02 Aug 2018
Announcing the Network Society Token – NST
Humanity has always evolved together with technology. We have been able to build the pyramids because we organized resources. There was always one guy who was able to decide what everybody else should do. Then, his aspiration was to leave a sign — to leave an object — after he died so that all of us could see how powerful he was. Everybody obeyed his wants. They allowed him to have this pyramid. Obviously, it is an incredibly beautiful achievement that we see today. But we...Read more
David Orban14 Mar 2018
Can Your Dreams Become Credit Worthy?
I met Edmilson Rodrigues years ago, and saw him persist in his dream to create a system that gives access to fair credit to everybody. He created Swapy Network, which aims to connect international investors from countries where the interest rates are lower to credit companies in countries where the interest rates are much higher, providing better returns to the first and lower cost capital for the latter. It also is creating the Swapy Financial ID to empower individuals, giving them the right...Read more
David Orban10 Mar 2018
Crypto’s Planetary Computer
In order to secure the transactions that the decentralized network of blockchain executes, a worldwide network of decentralized computations is executed, increasing in power and capabilities daily. The resources of energy, hardware and ingenuity that are accruing in this planetary computer are economically rewarded. Too many people miss the point of the positive sum game this represents, concentrating only on the apparent negative of the energy use. There are several considerations to be made...Read more
David Orban08 Mar 2018

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David Orban

The Author

David Orban

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