A good article about the CONTACT conference
George R. Stewart began his epochal Ordeal by Hunger by describing northern Nevada from a position in orbit 200 miles above Earth. This, in 1936, 24 years before any human had seen or photographed it. As always, Stewart was a ranger of the mind, looking out over the next pass to see what could be seen. The CONTACT conference also does this, and here’s a good article about that conference.
Here’s the final list of speakers for CONTACT 2012. In addition, there’ll be the ongoing astrobiology project, Cultures of the Imagination. If you’re interested in the perspective on Earth from OutThere — a perspective pioneered by George R. Stewart in Ordeal by Hunger, Storm, and Earth Abides — this is the conference to attend. And the price is very reasonable: book by tomorrow, 2-15, and it’s only $55 + the banquet and lodging.
SPEAKERS AND TITLES FOR CONTACT 2012
Robert McCann – “Kepler Report – Habitable Planets”
Jill Tarter – “Getting Earthlings on this World to Help with our Searches of the Kepler Worlds”
Chris Ford – “Watch the Skies: How Technology and Media are Revolutionizing Amateur Astronomy”
Gerald Nordley- “Interstellar Commerce”
Michael Shermer: “UFOs, UAPs, and CRAPs”
Donna Duerk – “Concepts for Moon Habitats”
Bruce Damer – “The EvoGrid and ChemoGrid: Genesis Engines Driving to a New Origin of Life”
Douglas Raybeck – “Sex and the Spanning Spacefarer ”
Bill Clancey: “Belief Systems and Cross-Cultural Communication”
Al Harrison – “American Cosmism”
Seth Shostak – ” Broadcasting Into Space: Recipe for Catastrophe?”
Penny Boston – “The Persistence of Microbial Life in Geological Materials: Implications for Evolutionary Biology on Earth and Astrobiology”
David Sanborn Scott – “Always Begin with the End in Mind: Hydricity”
Melanie Swan – “Human Body 2.0: Redesign, Democracy, And Next- Generation Intelligence”
Kathryn Denning – “If You Love This Solar System…”
Jim Funaro – “Some Thoughts on the Origins and Future of Love”
Reed Riner – “Turning Hindsight into Foresight: An Anthropological Approach to the Study of Futures”
Gus Frederick – “Graphics of the Gilded Age: The Original Steam Punk Art”
Roberta Goodman – “Learning Cetacean Languages”
Phil Aaberg & Don Scott – In Memoriam: Ted Everts
Frank Drake (Keynote) – “Optical SETI, Gravitational Lens Telescopes and the Current Status of Radio SETI”
Jim Pass – “Medical Astrosociology: A Combination of Space Medicine and
Social Science”
Chad Rohrbacher – “A Curriculum Guide for Using SF to Teach Science”
Dennis Etler – “China’s Vision of the Future”
Jeroen Lepre – “Arthur C. Clarke’s Maelstrom II: A Case Study for Digital Production in the Cloud”
the EARTH ABIDES project 