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How to Live Without Technology – Mark Boyle and Lily Cole in Conversation at Portland Hall, University of Westminster

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Time 19:45
Date 11/06/19
Price £32.16

Join Lily Cole as she meets Guardian columnist Mark Boyle, who has escaped the rat race to live ‘off the grid’ – free from money and technology.

Mark Boyle is a man who chooses to live differently. In his Guardian columns and his book The Moneyless Man, he documented a life lived without using money. Since then he has taken the decision to go even further and abandon all technology, living on a small-holding on the west coast of Ireland without phones, computers, or even electricity.

What was at first intended as a one-year experiment has proven to be so rewarding he is now planning to continue indefinitely. He has found an elemental life, one governed by the rhythms of the sun and seasons, where life and death dance in a primal landscape of blood, wood, muck, water, and fire – much the same life we have lived for most of our time on earth. He knows the hard won joys of building a home with his bare hands, learning to make fire, collecting water from the spring, foraging and fishing.

Lily Cole is one of the UK’s most prominent environmental advocates. Through her start-up, Impossible.com, she aims to guide global change through planet centric design. She and Mark join the How to: Academy for a conversation about how we live our lives at a time when technology advances at a sometimes alarming rate. How do the choices we make have an impact on others and the world around us, and what should we do about it?

Don’t miss this investigation into what it means to be human at a time when the boundaries between man and machine are blurring.

Mark Boyle is the author of three previous books, which have been translated into over twenty languages. A former business graduate, he has lived entirely without money for three years. He has written columns for the Guardian and has irregularly contributed to international press, radio and television. He lives on a smallholding in Co. Galway, Ireland.

Lily Cole spends her time on art and activism. As an advocate for sociopolitical and environmental issues, she has employed technology, writing, film making and public speaking as means to build awareness and encourage dialogue.

Lily was awarded a First Class BA in History of Art from Cambridge University in 2011. In 2013 she co-founded Impossible.com: a technology company that uses technology to solve social and environmental problems.

Lily has spoken at Davos, Google's Zeitgeist, Wired and Web Summit, was an affiliate at the Berkman Center at Harvard University, and holds an Honorary Doctor of Letters from GCU. Lily is a patron of the EJF and has worked significantly with WWF. She was named the Brontë Society’s creative partner for 2018. She writes often for national and international press. 'Impossible Utopias' is Lily's first book.

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