At the Frontier Tech Hub, we believe that playfulness, brainstorming, and testing are important ingredients for innovation. With that in mind, the goal of our Ideas Generation Workshop wasn’t for FCDO staff to create refined or excellent ideas that could actually be applications to our programme.

Blockchain is a distributed digital ledger that is virtually impossible to hack. While the mainstreaming of cryptocurrency has been the most visible extension of this trend, with Pew Research reporting in late 2021 that 86% of all US adults had said they had some awareness of cryptocurrencies, it is also the most volatile.

As we will see in two emerging trends, blockchain stands to disrupt the finance sector in other ways, leveraging its wider potential to prevent fraud, manage risks, and streamline transactions.

It’s the year 2025 and there are three important news stories airing on the 6 o’clock news today. In the world today, countries are experiencing impacts of technologies as they near election time. Some impacts like rising internet shutdowns and algorithm manipulation have been feared since they were first witnessed at the beginning of the decade, while evidence of tech being utilised for mass participation has led to celebration from Election Watch bodies.

And others are not so clear. As influencers take to stages beyond social media we’re realising how much more influential they may become, and there’s concern around the role of big tech organisations behind them…

UAVs are a lucrative and rapidly growing sector of the aviation industry, increasingly used to sense and transmit data, assist deliveries, and for transport. Here we will see two emerging trends influencing the drone and UAV sector, and consider the potential impacts that sophisticated surveillance could have on key democratic processes, including voter turnout and the public’s willingness to engage in political debate.