A professor at an Oxford University school founded by late Bermuda resident James Martin, is to speak on the dangers faced in an increasingly interconnected world.

Ian Goldin, director of the Oxford Martin School, at Oxford University, is one of the world’s leading experts on globalisation.

He is among a group of renowned economists, scientists and technology experts set to warn that unless we learn to manage globalisation and our increasingly interconnected world more effectively, we face a “dystopian future”.

They envision a world in which groups such as IS will take advantage of the systemic risks and vulnerabilities we have created.

One of Professor Goldin’s messages at OEB (formerly known as Online Educa Berlin) in Berlin next month will be that although we are in the midst of a “new renaissance”, in which the spread of ideas, innovation, and change is rapidly advancing: “One shouldn’t assume that technologies always give rise to good outcomes.”

The Oxford Martin School was founded in 2005 and was originally known as the James Martin 21st Century School, after its benefactor, Dr Martin. The British information technology consultant and Pulitzer prize-nominated author, lived in Bermuda from the 1990s. He bought Agar’s Island, near Point Shares, in the Great Sound. It was there that he did much of his writing. He died in June 2013.

Professor Goldin took up his position at the Oxford Martin School in 2006. He is a former vice-president of the World Bank and adviser to the late president Nelson Mandela of South Africa.

Professor Goldin argues that after the revolution created by the internet in science and society, one of the biggest challenges facing humankind is to learn to manage our connectedness more effectively.

“There have been vast improvements, not only in living standards, but also in health, freedoms, etc. That’s really come about by ideas travelling: from simple ideas that washing your hands prevents communicable diseases to complicated ones like new vaccinations. In all dimensions, these sorts of things have led to people living longer, healthier lives. That’s a result of connectivity in all its dimensions,” he explained.

“At the same time, though, not only good ideas spread; bad and very disruptive ones spread as well. Bad groups like IS are using new technology to spread ideas. It’s really about technology as a platform, but it’s what we spread on these platforms that really matters.

“Bad ideas travel more rapidly. IS has become the organisation with the largest foreign recruitment since the Spanish Civil War, in part due to its effectiveness in using social media on the internet.

“So, while the opportunities are enormous and people’s ability to learn, not least using open source technologies, has grown in many cases exponentially, we need to be aware that this is a very precious thing, this connectedness.

“We need to be more effective with managing this connectedness and managing this globalisation — and ensure it sustains the good and that we are able to minimise the bad.

“Our intersection is in many, many different dimensions, and it’s whether we are effective with this connectivity or not that is going to determine whether there’s a happy ending or a much more dystopian future.”

Leading futurist Cory Doctorow will argue at OEB that a lack of openness greatly increases risk, and governments are contributing, often deliberately, to vulnerabilities in the system.

“The way we learn about security is through an open discourse. There’s never been any way to do science where you suppress reports of failings or errors. Doing so has always produced bad science.

“This has become very urgent but the rules have gone the other way ... The digital lock provisions are getting more severe, not less severe ... The US just held a hearing on this, and they heard from people who had found vulnerabilities in voting machines, insulin pumps, pace makers, vehicles, aeroplanes, and nuclear power stations who have been prohibited from disclosing them.”

Mr Doctorow says that some governments deliberately add to the problem because, when they discover vulnerabilities, “rather than patching them, they try to make them last as long as possible, so they can use them as cyberweapons ... Governments that are meant to be defending us from security vulnerabilities are trying to prolong them so that they can weaponise them.”

Leading educational technologist David Price says that “people-powered innovation” is likely to be the source of new solutions and that many authorities and leading businesses are “in denial”.

“The demand for ever-faster rates of innovation, combined with the openness and ease of collaboration, have created a new phenomenon: people-powered innovation. Some businesses and most regulatory authorities may be in denial, but talking to the hackers and user innovators is much better than being left behind them,” said Mr Price.

Professor Goldin, Mr Doctorow, and Mr Price will be speaking in the opening plenary session of OEB on December 3. The conference attracts over 2,300 educators, managers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers from over 100 countries. OEB 2015 will take place in the Hotel InterContinental Berlin, between December 2 and December 4.