Stephen Fry on the Future of Humanity and Technology
Stephen Fry on
The Future of Humanity
& Technology
The Central Metaphor: Pandora's Box
If Gutenberg's revolution was Pandora 2.0 and the Industrial Revolution 3.0, then the information age is Pandora 4.0
Stephen Fry · Shannon Luminary Lecture, 2017
Historical arc: revolutions & their double-edged gifts
Six key themes from the lecture
History as Guide
Fry ransacks 600 years of technological history to argue that disruption is the norm — not the exception. Each revolution hurt before it healed. The printing press, steam engine, and web all follow the same arc.
Lost Internet Utopia
As an early adopter, Fry believed the web would be a "brave and beautiful new world" for art, culture, and democracy. Web 2.0's corporate turn into surveillance and outrage machines was a profound betrayal of that founding promise.
Surveillance & Exploitation
The dark side is real and must be named: mass surveillance, corporate data exploitation, state censorship, cybercrime, and the weaponisation of personal information. Denial helps no one.
The Convergence
AI, robotics, and the Internet of Things are no longer separate domains — they are fusing into a single unprecedented force, reshaping labour, identity, and what it means to be human.
Politics Failing Technology
In 2017's election cycle, politicians were "skating to where the puck used to be" — dangerously unaware of the revolution already underway. Holding leaders accountable is urgent and civic duty.
Elpis — Active Hope
In Hesiod's myth, Hope (Elpis) was the last creature trapped in Pandora's jar. Fry's call to action: don't just wait for hope — open the jar and let it fly free. Shape the revolution; don't be shaped by it.
The Triple Convergence
Intelligence
of Things
"Just as physics tries to unify its fields of force, technology unifies its own — AI, robotics, and IoT are now essentially one and the same thing." Together they represent the most disruptive convergence in human history — one that will redefine work, consciousness, and civilisation.
The jar is open — what flew out?
The Darkness Released
- Online bullying & harassment culture
- Mass surveillance by states & corporations
- Cybercrime, extortion & fraud at scale
- Disinformation & algorithmic radicalization
- Job displacement & economic insecurity
- Corporate capture of the open internet
- New forms of cyberterrorism
The Promise Still Alive
- Global democratisation of knowledge & culture
- Art, literature & music reaching every corner of the earth
- Citizen journalism & accountability tools
- Medical breakthroughs accelerated by AI
- Cross-border human connection and solidarity
- Open-source communities & cooperative innovation
- Unprecedented access to education & opportunity
The Last Creature in the Jar: Elpis
When Pandora slammed the lid in haste, she trapped one final being inside — Elpis, the spirit of Hope. Fry's lecture ends here: the lid is already off. The revolution is happening regardless. Our task is not to shut it again, but to keep the lid off and let Hope take flight. Not the passive, wishful hope of the fearful — but the active, informed, determined hope of people who understand history, name the darkness clearly, and choose to build something better anyway.
In His Own Words
Defining quotes from the lecture
What Pandora did not know was that when she shut the lid of the jar so hastily she forever imprisoned inside one last little creature, which was left behind to beat its wings hopelessly in the box for ever. Its name was Elpis, Hope.
This always seems to be the way with technological innovation. As much as it is a vector of negative disruption — corruption indeed — it is also the vector of progress and improvement.
On technology's dual natureWhen I first found out about and joined the internet and watched it grow with the arrival of the www, I described it to friends as the greatest gathering of human beings in the history of the planet.
On early internet optimismTechnology or science do not in and of themselves have moral valency. Printing could be used for official propaganda as easily as for what the church would consider heretical material.
On moral neutrality of techThe dark side of the rise of the machines give us the collywobbles, but we must understand it is going to happen — collywobbles or not — because the lid is already off the jar.
On facing the revolutionThe technology had intensified the corruption, but it was that same technology that was to spread the word of Luther's protest and prime the pump of the Protestant Reformation.
On Gutenberg & the Reformation