They were practically born with mobile phones and tablets in their hands, they use social media as the primary source of news about everyday life and the world. These are today’s teens, the kids who create our future. And we are counting on them. For this reason, we prepared a special programme for them as part of the next Deloitte KidsXO meeting at the September Future Port Prague and we gave them an opportunity to meet the main faces of the conference.
While the youngsters, members of the KidsXO club, wandered through the premises of the Prague Market hall, directed small drones or personally experienced the possibilities of virtual reality and our tattoo parlour (some of them repeatedly), the teens listened to Kevin Warwick. The first person to voluntarily have specially adjusted chips with the ability to detect nerve impulses inserted into his arm. Thanks to that, he was able to send commands to a robotic arm that could, for example, open doors in his New York apartment.
“Your brain and your body do not have to be in one place. In the future, your body can be everything you want it to be,” said the first human cyborg, British professor of cybernetics Kevin Warwick to the excited teenagers.
Then the roles switched and children started asking questions: Why does the body ignore implants? What about their safety and possibility of misuse? The best questions from the TeenXO mini-conference were rewarded.
The second speaker was Anita Sengupta, a NASA aerospace engineer and the senior vice-president of systems engineering of Virgin Hyperloop One, the company that plans to build a track based on the Hyperloop technology in India. Connecting the cities of Mumbai and Pune, the high-speed transfer system should cover approximately 150 km in under 30 minutes and its testing is successfully underway. During the most recent test in Las Vegas, the passenger capsule was able to travel at a speed of 300km/h.
Aside from this, she introduced the attendees to trips to Mars, which are a matter of the very near future. “Our generation is preparing the conditions for people to fly to this planet. Your generation is the one that will be sending tourists there in 15 – 20 years.”
Then she still had enough time to motivate the young ladies: “In the field of astronautics, you meet mostly men. But don’t get intimidated by that, don’t get discouraged! As you can see, a woman can get very far in this environment too.”
The third speaker was the American futurist, Forbes correspondent, virtual and augmented reality pioneer and former Disney vice-president Charlie Fink, who has obtained more than 15 awards for music production. He was the one who came up with the idea for the world-famous animated film The Lion King.
And that´s it. See you next time!
Seminars, webcasts, business breakfasts and other events organized by Deloitte.
