We are immensely excited and proud to have been selected for Tech Nation's 2020 Future Fifty cohort, alongside 28 fellow UK tech trailblazers.
The technology platforms that connected, inspired and empowered us were also enabling adults with a sexual interest in children to groom, abuse and document their sexual depravity in digital images and videos depicting these unspeakable crimes.
Today we face another ‘moonshot moment’: the opportunity to tackle challenging diseases that currently have no cure and to discover treatments for an ever-growing and ageing population that will live on average well into their 90s but will spend many of those later years unwell and in need of constant care. This is both an urgent human need but also an urgent priority for governments and society as the cost of care rises disproportionately to GDP.
“I think this time in our history is the most exciting time. We have so much technology that we can leverage and that we can use to create a better world.”
I would like to express my happiness that the first Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities, under the theme ‘Child Dignity Online’, was held in Abu Dhabi last November. This event built on the message that was launched a year ago at the Child Dignity Congress held in Rome, to which I gave my full support and encouragement. I would like to thank all faith leaders committed to combating this issue, and I assure them of the support and participation of the Catholic Church and myself towards this important issue, the protection of minors in all its aspects.
Our mission is to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing humanity, and that is the fact that there are over 9,000 diseases that have no treatment and over 300 million people who are suffering from rare diseases for which no treatment will be developed anytime soon — as long as the current economic and development models persist.
Vanessa asked me to talk today about why we need to disrupt the tech industry, and with the revelations of the past several months from the giants of Silicon Valley, it’s clear that our industry has a lot to answer for. Just this weekend, a Facebook spokesperson admitted the company “wasn’t doing enough to prevent its platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence.”
Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, we gather here today at the Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities to discuss one of the most urgent problems of our time: the exploitation and abuse of children through digital technologies.
We hear so much about how technology is transforming life as we know it — from autonomous vehicles to the likely prospect of space travel to Mars — so why then does the treatment of disease still represent one of the greatest unmet human needs?
