AC2005: Last Four Days for Early Bird Registration
On Monday, August 1st, our conference registration price goes up $50. Sign up now if you can! AC2005 will feature 45+ world-class speakers and 350+ distinguished attendees discussing the increasing intelligence of machines (artificial intelligence or AI), the evolving effectiveness of technology-aided humans (intelligence amplification or IA), and how these twin accelerating trends are shaping our future.
Come meet Vernor Vinge, Ray Kurzweil, George Gilder, Daniel Amen, Esther Dyson, Steve Jurvetson, Peter Thiel, Harold Morowitz, Marcos Guillen, Beth Noveck, Janna Anderson, Philip Rosedale, Eric Boehnisch-Volkmann, Blake Ross, David Fogel, Robert Hecht-Nielsen, Ron Kaplan, Patrick Lincoln, Ruzena Bajcsy, T. Colin Campbell, Scott Rafer, Cecily Sommers, and special host Moira Gunn. See all speakers confirmed to date.Sign up now using your Accelerating Times discount code (AC2005-ATIMES, entered in all capital letters) and get $50 off! This special $400 conference rate is available to ATimes readers until August 1st. Will you be coming? If so, tell your friends! Post a "Meet me at AC2005" button at your site.
Janna Anderson, George Gilder, Ron Kaplan, and Patrick Lincoln join AC2005 Presenters
Recently added speakers include Janna Anderson, Elon U. Professor, head of the Internet Predictions Database, and author of Imagining the Internet, 2005; George Gilder, Editor in Chief of the famous Gilder Technology Report, Chairman of Gilder Publishing, and author of the bestselling books Microcosm,
1990 ; Telecosm, 2000, and Silicon Eye, 2005; Ron Kaplan, Fellow in the Intelligent Systems Laboratory at Palo Alto Research Center; and Patrick Lincoln, Director of the Computer Science Lab at SRI International. These technology scholars, researchers, and futurists have some fascinating things to say about today's technology trends. Together, they are great complement to the entrepreneurs, social change leaders, and other forward-thinkers at Accelerating Change 2005. Come meet them all at Stanford this September!
200 Free Advance Copies of Singularity is Near
Keynote speaker and internationally-renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil will present free signed advance copies of his upcoming book, The Singularity is Near, which will be released nationally four days after the conference, to the first 200 registrants at Accelerating Change 2005. Additional copies will also be available for sale to conference participants. One of 2005's most anticipated new books, The Singularity is Near extensively makes the provocative case for accelerating and increasingly human-surpassing technological and computer advances in coming decades, and proposes a global "phase transition" circa 2040 where many forms of higher human thinking may be exceeded by global computing systems.
Kurzweil argues these systems will be seen not as separate from us, but as our increasingly personalized electronic extensions. If true, how can we ensure this will be an economically productive, socially stabilizing, and individually empowering transition? What are the major risks to be avoided? How do we protect the freedoms of those not interested in participating in this "digital future?" What might prevent or delay this scenario?
Attendees will have ample opportunity to explore these issues in an extended Q&A with Ray at AC2005, moderated by science radio personality Moira Gunn, host of NPR’s Tech Nation. Mr. Kurzweil is an inductee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, a winner of the Lemelson-MIT prize and the National Medal of Technology, and the founder of nine very successful technology companies. His internationally best-selling 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence has been published in nine languages.
What's Next in Commercial or Consumer Robotics? Win A Roomba at AC2005
Robotics pioneer iRobot has donated five Roombas to Accelerating Change 2005. We will raffle all five for the best 100-word (or less) answers to the question "What's Next in Commercial or Consumer Robotics?" by AC2005 attendees by 2pm on Sunday, Sept 18th. These brief, paragraph-length ideas can propose new commercial or consumer robots, new features for future Roombas, new and untapped market segments for existing or future robots, new technologies, or any other innovation you think needs to be or will soon be addressed. The time horizon can be as short as next year, and should be limited to ten years. You can discuss research, development, production, marketing, or any other aspect of the business model. All ideas are released to the public domain.
The five winners will be picked anonymously (but subjectively) by our panel of judges Sunday afternoon, and all ideas will be forwarded to Colin Angle, Rodney Brooks, Helen Greiner, and the other smart folks at iRobot after the event, along with the email addresses of the submitters. Are you an AC2005 registrant? Want to share your thoughts on what could or should happen next in this important space? Send your 100 word entries to mail(at)accelerating(dot)org, or give them to us when you arrive at the conference. No more than five entries per AC2005 registrant, please. Can you make a clean sweep?
Seattle Future Salon Looking for New Members
Two forward-thinking Seattleites, Marc Goodner and Brad Mewhort have signed on to start a Seattle Future Salon and are looking for folks to attend the free discussion and presentation groups. If you live in or near Seattle and are interested, you can sign up for their Yahoo group here to join online discussions and to receive emails about coming events. To learn more about ASF's Future Salon Network, check out our Future Salons start page.
Masters of Strategic Foresight at Regent University
[JS] A new online MA with a strategic leadership and futures studies emphasis is being developed by Regent University, a private Christian university, starting Fall 2006 (press release). This will complement the university's MA in Organizational Leadership, which currently has 150 students. It will operate in the School of Leadership Studies, which is focused on Christian Leadership, but the MA curriculum will be ecumenical and open students of all faiths. About 15% of students are expected to be from religious professions. It is being developed by Christian futurist Jay Gary with the assistance of Peter Bishop (Director, U. Houston MS Program in Studies of the Future) and Wendy Schultz. ASF is heartened to see Regent continue move in a more ecumenical and universalist direction with their programs. As a unitarian universalist (or "deist") myself, I believe improving global appreciation of all the world's faiths and wisdom traditions, without imposing any one of them as a uniquely privileged value set, is the future of spiritual leadership in an age of accelerating scientific learning and technical advancement.
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