Technology is part of our everyday life. It can be transformative, empowering, uplifting and life-saving. In short, a force for good.

But tech can also be exploitative, deleterious, deceptive and alienating. To wit, a mendacious monkey on our back. 

As a bright side of the road flaneur, I like to place my hopes in the credit side of the tech ledger, even if, as Kate Crawford recently observed, I am adequately cynical about tech to view Artificial Intelligence as neither artificial nor intelligent. 

In fact, I am involved in the EmTech Europe conference from Belfast on 1-2 July precisely because I believe in our ability to tame tech for societal good. Indeed, I believe the past year-plus of pandemic would have been crushing without the tech magic of Zoom and Sykpe and all their ingenious connecting buddies. 

And yet, the one thing that even the most brilliant internet communication tools can't give us is the emotional connection that comes with being beside people.

Common purpose, esprit de corp, sense of community, that corny but indispensable one-for-all-and-all-for-one spirit, a shoulder-to-lean on, a bright mind to spark off, the very energy which comes from being in one room with a hundred other like-minded souls. No matter how sophisticated, regardless of how many billion dollars its valuation, no online wizardry can give me the comfort and the challenge of being with others. 

But perhaps a solution to this dispiriting distance between us is closer to hand than we realise. And a tech solution too: that very same EmTech Europe.

Founded by MIT, EmTech is regarded as the world's foremost showcase for emerging technologies and the audacious line-up for the Belfast virtual gathering will only burnish that reputation. Kudos to the Magnificent Seven of local tech leaders who have backed this conference coup: Aflac NI, Unosquare, Rapid7, KPMG, Liberty IT, Bazaarvoice and Neuda.

But what if on 1-2 July, we could go one step further and bring together in our most iconic building - Titanic Belfast — 100 civic champions who get the importance of tech to Belfast's rise, from college students to corporate head honchos, and from community ambassadors to start-up tzars? 

Covid protocols will allow in-person, live conferences (with adequate risk assessments, audience caps, social distancing etc) from June 21. However, our audience would have to be local as no out-of-state travel is permitted. For me, that would make it all the more rewarding. It's been a year and more since the champions of Open University, Queen's, St Mary's University College and UU, have been in the one room together. It's a similar story for the councillors, MLAs and ministers driving the strategies which will make or break Belfast as a knowledge economy — they haven't been around the table with the entrepreneurs and business leaders setting the pace of job growth and investment. And none of the aforementioned have been able to hear first-hand from the hospital staff using new health-tech to change lives or from the pioneers of renewable energy right here in Belfast who are taking giant steps now to lead the green-tech revolution. 

The power of such a coming together would be immeasurable.

To coin a term used by our phlegmatic Health Minister Robin Swann today when presaging the lifting of Covid restrictions from midnight, such a gathering would be "emotional".

So perhaps tech can, after all, bring us emotion. 

And a unique chance to salute those intrepid founders of Moderna and BioNTech who with their breathtaking breakthrough in the use of Messenger RNA technology have given us all a second chance.

Such a salute in the company of others would not just be a tribute to tech for good it would also be downright emotional. 

Can it happen? Of course. But it will take all shoulders to the wheel and a careful, science-led approach. It will also require an appreciation of the powerful signal that such a gathering (the first tech summit in these islands since March 2020) would send out about Belfast's determination to build back better from this Covid nightmare by using tech as a tool of transformation.

This wounded city has risen before from other eras of heartache and hardship. It will do so again by using head and heart.