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Although the title sounds like a science fiction film, the speech addresses the possible consequences of the introduction of autonomous entities (from cars to machine learning by various data sets) into the space in which we live. Ms. Johannisse looks at the topic from the various backgrounds she has experienced in her career, like being an architecture historian who wrote a book about Dutch Expressionist Architecture to being the advisor of the Vice-President of the European Commission on the Digital Agenda (responsible for cyber security) and, at present, being the Counselor for Innovation, Tech and Science at the Netherlands Embassy in Washington. She will try to compare the Dutch/ European experiences and developments with the USA, especially concerning regulation.

Since everything in this field is “under construction”, she would also like to challenge the audience to give their input. The starting point of this discussion is: To be able to deal constructively with “autonomous” space, we need a multidisciplinary and inclusive approach, not a tech driven one. And if there is one place where all these disciplines come together at this moment, it is academia.

Bio: Sigrid Johannisse is Counselor for Innovation, Technology and Science at the Netherlands Embassy in Washington and in charge of the Dutch Innovation Attache network in the USA and Canada. Previously, she was founder and director of the Dutch national startup programme “StartupDelta” which she ran together with the Dutch Special Envoy for startups, Neelie Kroes. Ms. Johannisse was the advisor of Vice-president Kroes at the European Commission in Brussels on the Digital Agenda and responsible for cyber security, e-government, e-health, smart cities, startups and innovation. Before her role in the European Commission, Ms. Johannisse held various managerial positions in the Dutch government, at the forefront of innovation policy making, with an emphasis on high tech, IT and biobased economy. She has developed various new innovation policy initiatives with public private partnerships at its core. Ms. Johannisse is originally an architecture historian. At the beginning of her career she wrote a book about the Dutch architect Michel de Klerk of the Amsterdam School, published in three languages.