Last night I went to The Sporton Inaugural Professorial Lecture and Performance

Academic believes that the digital revolution has helped de-rail global economy.

Well, this lecture sounded interesting. As someone who practically lives via the digital world, as do many others, I wanted to hear about this and how it affected the economy.

It was Gregory Sporton's inaugural lecture. When someone is a new professor, they have to give their first lecture.

I haven't been to many lectures (though did give one at BCU about the 4am Project), but this one was pretty different. With a background in dance, the lecture kicked off with the Dance Of The Little Swans (video) which was choreographed by Gregory.

Gregory then took to the stage. He asked questions and raised points such as:

Are we replacing things (tangible items) for bits powered by the revolution in this digital age? Are we able to measure these bits in the same way as things? We can't see them. How do we know their value?

Is creativity being redifined by technology. 100 years a go, or so, a 'creative' would make something, such as artwork, or sculptures for example, and it wasn't a label people applied to themselves as quickly and easily as they do now.

Are we losing out on real life contact and connections by using tech tools such as Skype, twitter, Facebook etc, which may give the impression of closeness? Does it give us an excuse not to meet up with friends/family etc in real life? Is that healthy?

I was most saddened to hear about care robots for the elderly. How about this for replacing human contact with tech?

But it was not all doom and gloom. Gregory's lecture was sprinkled with humour throughout, and ended the way it started with a dance, (in the dark with coloured balls) in which Gregory himself performed! How often do you see a lecturer dancing? Not often I'd guess.



I'd say the next Professor who has an inaugural lecture will have to come up with something pretty imaginative to make it as memorable as Gregory's! ;)

I made a Storify of some of the tweets from last if you would like to check it out.

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