ABSTRACT
Will new information networks and social media bring us together or bring us further apart?
The exponential upgrade of technology and the improvement in Artificial Intelligence (AI) pose great opportunity and challenge to conventional ideas about the economy in particular and society in general. Whole sectors such as bio-engineering and telecommunications are set to be re-made. While offering to network and connect us as a species, the ‘smart’ age of big data also holds prospect for exploitation in the short term and radical redefinition of what it means to be human in the longer term. In one area, we have seen its role in disseminating disinformation and promoting surveillance, both posing severe threat to democracy. Some argue that the net holds a mirror to human nature, and reveals starkly its range from the caring to the cruel. This chapter asks the question can technology refract rather than reflect human nature?
