Forster is constantly scoping trends and developments in technology that shape the way we communicate with each other, to ensure we’re keeping abreast of opportunities for our clients and the people’s lives we’re all working to protect and improve. Nesta’s FutureFest 2015 was recently held in London, and we were there to learn and emerge ourselves in the world of ‘future thinking’.

I’m taking part in Neurosis, billed as ‘the world’s first neuro-driven thrill ride’. It’s an exhibit at Futurefest 2015, a weekend-long event that aims to give visitors a taste of the coming decades.This world will be brought to life for one weekend at London’s FutureFest hosted by Nesta, the UK’s innovation foundation. Curated by musician and author Pat Kane, FutureFest is a weekend of immerse experiences, compelling performances and radical speakers to excite and challenge perceptions of the future.

Yes it is a fascinating idea. The Electrical activity across my scalp feed into the experience, and levels of excitement, boredom and focus dictate the frenzy or otherwise of the music, motions and visualizations as I disappear through psychedelic tunnels reminiscent of the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The more you concentrate, the easier the ride, so I cheat by doing some mental arithmetic, and hope it doesn’t ruin Walker’s research data.Future Fest invites people to experience how Lagos and Johannesburg, two rapidly-growing and exciting hubs for creativity and technology, are transforming into urban superpowers and their citizens into globally-renowned inventors

Within the realm of human-machine interactions, Social Robotics deals with the underlying complex rules and roles of the society. Such robots do not assume servile and mundane tasks, as in an assembly line, but rather connect with humans in their very own context. For instance, we find robots as learning assistants, as healthcare caregivers or as receptionists. The Blind Robot is about the understanding of the degrees of engagement, would it be either intellectual, emotional or physical, that are generated when a Social Robot intimately touches a person.

Geoff Mulgan CBE (born 1961) is Chief Executive of the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) and Visiting Professor at University College London, the London School of Economics and the University of Melbourne. Mulgan obtained a First Class degree from Balliol College, Oxford and a PhD in telecommunications from the University of Westminster. Geoff Mulgan highlighted how Nesta championed the use of evidence in decision-making. Such playful explorations of possibility can be a pleasurable counterweight to more dystopian scenarios.