The evocative confection of technology and Thailand offers a vision of a future where traditions find new life through cutting-edge technologies, where technology empowers difference to flourish rather than occludes it: a Thai futurist vision. But like the discordant background music this clashes directly with the more universalized technological solutions presented by the speakers moments before: a world covered in sensors, decentralized finance, trust-enhancing social networks that purportedly align with “human values” (not clear precisely whose) along with some of the more mundane money-making schemes that corporate executives have presented.

I left the climate-controlled greenery-adorned office buildings of True Digital Park to walk back to the sky train station above Sukhumvit Road, where the aroma of motorcycle petrol and cacophony of honking horns envelops me. The grittiness of the urban street stood in marked contrast to the glossy technological futures being discussed inside. It was hard to reconcile the optimism of elites from both sides of the Pacific with the lived reality facing most citizens of Bangkok, a metropolis of 14 million people where college graduates earn an average wage of 20,000 baht, or around $500 a month, and where traffic regularly grinds to a crawl turning short commutes into lengthy odysseys, especially during the summer monsoon, with the entire metropolis at risk of being underwater in several decades due to sea-level rise.