SPEAKERS AND PRESENTATIONS

Philip Aaberg
"A Soundtrack to 'Earth Abides'"
A 2002 Grammy Nominee, world-class composer and pianist Philip Aaberg is a musician with incredible range and a boundless, distinctive style. He finds devoted listeners among rock, country, blues, jazz, new age, and classical music fans, and his range of performances includes everything from solo piano concertos with the Boston Pops Orchestra and Latvian National Symphony to appearances with luminaries like Peter Gabriel, Elvin Bishop and John Hiatt.  His most recent albums on Sweetgrass Music include "Live From Montana", "Field Notes", "Christmas" and "The Big Open" (to be released).

Carol Anderson
"COTI HI"
Carol is a nationally recognized science teacher. With Dave Tamori, she is bringing the student team from Oroville high school to participate in the Cultures of the Imagination simulation.

Darrel Anderson
"Art and/or/as Language"
Notions about cooperative, corrosive, synergistic, redundant, and other sorts of Arts/Letters relationships. Is an image really worth a thousand words -- or does it just spoil them? Written language started as art and art has splintered off to form new visual languages. How are the getting along these days?

Darrel's work includes printmaking, painting, computer graphics for film, software creation and illustration. Lately, his efforts revolve around understanding the creative process on a cognitive level, and exploring the places where art and science collide. In 2003, (using groBoto, Darrel's ongoing software project), he collaborated with Joshua Minges and Carter Emmart on the creation of two animated sequences for the Hayden Planetarium's music show Sonic Vision . These days, Darrel is working as a designer and consultant for a massive online ecosystem, populated with "intelligent" autonomous digital 3D creatures. This world, (created by Michael Korkin, Popular Genetics), employs A-Life systems and genetic algorithms in a fun-but-faithful way. In his own words, Darrel has found a way to lie, bluff, or slip unnoticed into any endeavor that stretches & teaks the artistic/creative nerve.

Athena Andreadis
"The Other Double Helix: The Intertwining of Science and Science Fiction"
In her lab, Athena Andreadis investigates the human brain at the molecular level, hoping to understand how it creates the mind. She has an abiding love for science fiction and space exploration. Athena has always wondered about the possibility and forms of life elsewhere and the limits of the human body and mind in radically altered environments.

Science fiction used to be a forerunner of science and acted as perhaps the most potent recruiter for future scientists. Now, it seems content to issue timid comments on what already exists. Science fiction has a vital role to play as an ambassador for science and technology, on which we are now entirely dependent and which are our sole choice if we ever want to take to the stars.

Peter Bishop
Chair, Studies of the Future, U Houston-Clear Lake.

James D. Burke
"Effect of 'Storm' on a teenager"
Burke writes, "As a teenager, I was a great admirer of Stewart's books, Storm and Fire. Not only did those works enhance understanding and love of my forest surroundings; also Stewart's way of using vignettes and his prose style set a model for me to emulate in my own writing. Later, as I pursued a long career in deep-space engineering and science, I read several of Stewart's other books and shared his visions of the interconnections of science, history and literature."

James D. Burke retired from JPL after working there from 1949 to 2001. In retirement he is a faculty member of the International Space University, a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, a member of the Space Studies Institute at Princeton and a member of The Planetary Society, where he is technical editor of The Planetary Report. Burke's main professional interest is in the exploration and settlement of the Moon.

Bruce Damer
"NASA Exploration Initiative Updates"
Bruce Damer will provide an overview of this year's projects from DigitalSpace and the Contact Consortium. First he will present an inside view of how NASA and its community sees vehicles, missions and time lines for the new Moon/Mars exploration initiative and contrasting views from private space initiatives such as the Ansari X-Prize and Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne (and Two). In addition, we will take a look at the Contact Consortium's Biota.org group which is sponsoring a global competition to develop distributed evolutionary software called Darwin@Home (taking its inspiration from SETI@Home).

Bruce co-founded the Contact Consortium, a sister organization to CONTACT, with Jim Funaro in 1995. The Consortium built on the work of SolSys and Epona to carry out experimentation with and hold conferences about multi-user virtual worlds on the Internet. Bruce also founded DigitalSpace, a 3D design studio that is engaged in a number of projects, many with NASA to model potential future space vehicles and missions.

Kathryn Denning
"Unearthing Contact"
Historical accounts of contact between human societies are useful analogues when considering contact between worlds. Archaeology can expand those historical accounts in some significant ways, and thereby contribute to understanding the full repertoire of human responses to contact.

Kathryn Denning merrily traipses through the terrain of anthropology, archaeology, and philosophy, as she examines metanarratives about Others, and compares ideas about the best ways of knowing Others. Her subjects range from aliens to zoos. She is a professor in the Anthropology department at York University in Toronto.

Keith Doyle
"Lagoon of Tranquility"
Artist and musician Keith Doyle brings a new work to this year's art show. The Lagoon of Tranquility is an experimental interactive video/tabletop exhibit where participants are encouraged to feed the virtual wildlife and observe their behaviours.

Carter Emmart
Carter is the director of Astrovisualization for production and education at the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. He was one of the original team members of the NASA funded Digital Galaxy Project that helped redefine how a planetarium theater can present science to the public. The newly rebuilt Hayden Planetarium is now used as an immersive display that serves to surround its audiences in an accurately visualized 3D atlas of the Universe. Carter explores the concept of scientific storytelling with immersive data visualization, and how artistic processes can divine meaning and form out of the abstractions of science.

Ben Finney
"Tsiolkovsky's Voyage to the Moon"
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the Russian space pioneer who developed the theory of spaceflight before Goddard and Oberth, wrote didactic science fiction novellas about spaceflight, and also served as a consultant on a 1935 film about the first rocket flight to the moon. Drawings from his report and clips from the film show how prescient he was.

Ben Finney is an anthropologist fascinated by migration over the sea and into space, has most recently taught at the University of Hawai'i, the University of French Polynesia and the International Space University. Also an alum of the "ET Phone Home" trailer when NASA did SETI.

R. D. "Gus" Frederick
"The Kid's Cafe Mission: Journey of the Nutritionauts"
As part of a grant designed to teach good nutrition to young kids, Frederick facilitated the production of a video program featuring 3rd graders as the talent, and high schoolers as the production crew. The result was "The Kid's Cafe Mission," a DVD featuring a crew of space travelling "Nutritionauts" exploring the Solar System in search of Health Rocks, that when added to a special transformer device, changes them into nutritious ingredients for healthy snacks. Frederick will explain how this approach can easily be done with digital video production hard & software, and a small budget.

Frederick is a free-lance multi-media artist who lives in Silverton, Oregon with his two cats, lots of books and tons of 78rpm phonograph records. A long-time space enthusiast, he is an active member of the Mars Society, serving as Webster for the Society's analog Mars Habitat program.

Jim Funaro
Founder of CONTACT, Jim is an instructor emeritus in anthropology at Cabrillo College, which recently awarded him its highest honor for teaching excellence. Publications demonstrating his research interests are "Anthropologists as Culture Designers for Offworld Colonies" and "On the Cultural Impact of Extraterrestrial Contact." Besides his degrees in Anthropology, he has a BA cum laude in Literature and is a published poet; he won the American Anthropological Association's 1997 prize for poetry.

Fabienne Goux-Baudiment <updated>
"From the Dream to its Achievement: Evolution of the Scenario Building."
Fabienne is the head of proGective, a consulting firm dedicated to futures research, study and advice she founded in August 1994. Since 1995, she has taught futures studies at the University of Angers (France) -ISTIA, Institute of the Science and Technology for Engineers- and regularly gives lectures in universities, public institutions, private organisations on various futures-oriented subject. Besides her degrees in Political Sciences, she has a PhD cum summa laude in Sociology (futures studies) and was attracted to futures studies by her love for science fiction and space activities.

Futures studies (especially the French ones) are too often described as the "science of scenarios". And when we wonder about its usefulness, as such a tool, we tend to confuse the scenario itself with its process, the scenario building. Consequently, I will try, first, to clarify the nature, purpose, meaning and efficiency of what we, French futurists, call "scenarios". Second, I will show how the scenario building has evolved from Jules VERNE to nowadays and its impact on the decision-making. At last, I will suggest what challenge we have to face now in this field if the real purpose of futurists is to help building the future.

Linda Groff
"The Future Evolution of Humanity - Possible Alternatives"
Professor, Political Science & Future Studies, CSU-Dominguez Hills.

John Hibbs
On January 17, 2006 millions around the world will pause to celebrate Ben Franklin's 300th anniversary. John Hibbs, and the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Global Education have plans to make it the biggest, longest running birthday party in history. John's talk will be about how this is a rocket ship that we can all ride and benefit from.

John Hibbs is the Founder of the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Global Education. John holds a history degree from the University of Oregon, an MBA in Finance from the Golden Gate University, and was a member of Special Forces while serving in the U.S. Army.  Currently, John is the Director of the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Global Education, which is heavily involved in promoting distance education worldwide.

Jeroen Lapré
"Maelstrom II: An Arthur C. Clarke Science Fiction Film Short"
Based on the short story by Arthur C. Clarke, Maelstrom II is an independent film short produced and directed by Jeroen Lapre', a digital artist at Industrial Light and Magic. His nine years of film effects credits include the Star Wars Prequels, Artificial Intelligence, the Hulk, and Harry Potter 3. Jeroen is an avid science and space exploration enthusiast, and has a passion for science education.

Maelstrom II is an Arthur C. Clarke film short about the resourcefulness and courage of fragile Humanity in the unforgiving environment of space colonization.

Maelstrom II is a space science education project, intending to present celestial mechanics and space colonization to the science student and enthusiast in a compelling manner. The DVD release will include supplemental educational material on those topics. Jeroen will be presenting his work in progress on Maelstrom II, which will include production design, artist impressions, animatics, and actor screen tests.

Tom Lombardo
"Science Fiction: The Mythology of the Future"
Tom Lombardo is Chair of Psychology, Philosophy and Religion at Rio Salado College.

Science fiction is clearly the most visible and influential form of futurist thinking in contemporary popular culture. Why is science fiction so popular? My argument will be that science fiction resonates with all the fundamental dimensions of the human mind and human experience. It speaks to the total person about the future.

In my presentation, I will explain how science fiction synthesizes the strengths of mythic narrative with scientific and rational thinking. It engages both the Dionysian and Apollonian sides of the human mind and provides a holistic and integrative experience of the future. Further, I
will propose that science fiction, in some ways, stimulates and enhances future consciousness more effectively than abstract or non-fictional approaches to the future. In particular, it embodies a level of concrete and narrative realism not found in abstract or theoretical speculation on the
future. Most centrally I will describe how science fiction has emerged as the mythology of the future.

Michelle Merrill
"Sources of Inspiration and the Emergence of Sustainable Technologies"
Themes of ecological breakdown have formed a basis for much speculative fiction.  How do we envision futures where we have solved some environmental challenges?  What ideas and technologies are emerging for mitigating ecological crises?  Who are today's thought leaders in sustainability, and where do they seek inspiration?

Michelle Merrill is an ecoliteracy educator with Emergent Systems, applying biological knowledge to challenges in leadership and sustainability.  Her Ph.D. (Duke University) focused on orangutan social learning in the rainforests of northern Sumatra.

Gerald Nordley
"Embracing fuzziness in science writing"
Just because you can't describe something exactly, doesn't mean it isn't there.  Global warming; warnings of tsunamis, earthquakes, asteroid impacts; various health risks; and extraterrestrial intelligence all have gray areas that require "weasle words."  Use of clear, definite, rhetorically
compelling langauge on these subjects could not only be misleading, but might actually do harm in several ways.  What's a poor writer to do?

Gerald is a retired Air Force officer, author and astronautical engineer who has published both technical and science fiction work and has won Analog's annual "Anlab" reader's award three times for fiction and once for non-fiction. His latest book, writing as "G. David Nordley" is After the Vikings, a collection of futuristic Mars related stories. Gerald writes a science column for Speculations, an electronic/print magazine for Science Fiction writers and also serves as CONTACT's treasurer.

Jim Pass
"The Sociology of SETI: An Astrosociological Perspective"
Throughout the space age, the social sciences, and especially sociology, demonstrated a strong reluctance to address human behavior and societal issues related to space. The American larger culture supports space exploration though an undercurrent exists that questions its legitimacy. SETI represents a good example of a substantive area supported in science fiction literature, now adopted by astrobiology, and yet ignored by the sociological community. This presentation seeks to examine some of these contradictions as they relate to SETI and the proposed establishment of astrosociology.

Jim Pass, Ph.D. received his doctorate in sociology from the University of Southern California (USC) in 1991. He is the founder of Astrosociology.com and currently maintains the website and its related activities. Dr. Pass considers himself the first astrosociologist and strongly advocates the establishment of astrosociology as a new subdiscipline of sociology.

Douglas Raybeck
"The Future Through Science Fiction"
The future has been a dominant theme in science fiction since the beginning of this genre in 1772 with Mercier (L'An 2440).   More recently figures such as Arthur C. Clarke and William Gibson have come to prominence as a result of their successful predictions. However, this paper, will focus more on the less well known, but even more prescient contributions of John Brunner, particularly Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up.  Douglas Raybeck (PhD, Cornell 1975) is a Professor of Anthropology at Hamilton College. Author of several books and numerous articles, his most recent book is Looking Down the Road: A Systems Approach to Future Studies, 2000.

Reed Riner
Reed Riner a co-founder of CONTACT, is Professor of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff where he regularly teaches courses on the anthropological study of the future, aka anticipatory anthropology. His current interests include the Flagstaff Tomorrow project, the NAU Solar System Simulation, simulation modeling in general, and gardening.

Kim Stanley Robinson
"Getting Science Into Science Fiction:  It's Hard."
A description from the sf writer's point of view of the multiple feedback loops between science and science fiction, the huge difficulties in incorporating science into fiction and the occasional unforeseen benefits that result. One of today's most highly acclaimed science fiction writers, Robinson's work has received many honors including the Nebula, the Hugo, the Asimov, John W. Campbell, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. Among his novels are the Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars series. Robinson's newest book is, THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT, with FORTY SIGNS OF RAIN due out in June 2004 from Bantam.

Dr. Wendy Schultz
"Working the Incendiary Instability: describing future drama to incite future design"
From the interaction between technological change and the wierd ways of human conduct, stories emerge. From the stories we can see ourselves reflected in a kaleidoscope of different possibilities. Great writers distill those possibilities into emotional truths which enlighten the present. Futures researchers distill them into strategic questions which problematise the present, in order to provoke us into responsibly creating a better future. What makes a story about the future a strategic tool rather than an escapist's dream? Let's explore the dramatic space of the future, how it is created, and the uses to which it is put: images of the future, scenario-building tools, and the inspiration of vision, exploration, and nightmare.

Don Scott
An educator for more than 30 years, and a former National Park Service Ranger/Naturalist, Don is now Director of The Geo.S Project. The Project devotes itself to studying and teaching the work and ideas of George R. Stewart. Scott is currently finishing up a major biography of George R. Stewart. He looks forward each year to the CONTACT conference as a place to explore new ideas with friends and colleagues.

Carlo H. Séquin
“Fountain of Universes?”
The imagery of "The Roman Fountain" by Swiss poet C.F. Meyer, the organization into "cantos" and commentaries of Nabokov's "Pale Fire", and speculations by physicist and science fiction author John Cramer ("Einstein's Bridge"), are woven into a discussion of the possibilities of intelligent life in multiple universes.

Carlo H. Séquin, originally a physicist, has been a professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley since 1977. For the last 20 years he has been interested in computer graphics, geometric modeling, and computer-aided design tools for circuit designers, architects, and for mechanical engineers. During the last ten years he has also collaborated with artists, and has created several designs for geometric sculptures.

He recently received the "IEEE Technical Achievement" award for his early work on charge-coupled devices for solid state cameras and for his more recent activities in computer-aided design.

Seth Shostak
Seth is senior astronomer and official spokesman for the SETI Institute. A distinguished astronomer with many publications to his credit, Seth is also a photographer, filmmaker and widely known media personality. Seth’s book, Sharing the Universe: Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life has received much public and scholarly acclaim.

Michael Sims
"Update on Mars: the MER Results"
Dr. Michael Sims is Research Scientist with the Center for Mars Exploration and the Computational Sciences Division of NASA Ames. Michael received a BS in Physics and a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Mathematics from Rutgers University and has been at NASA Ames Research Center since 1987. His research includes robotics, machine learning, visualization, and tools for enhancing and easing scientific modeling. He was one of the founding members of the artificial intelligence and the intelligent mechanisms groups at Ames. Previously he served as agent for artificial intelligence, robotics and human performance for NASA's Office of Exploration. Michael is actively involved in plans for future planetary missions including robotic activities and human settlements on the Mars and the Moon. He was a participating scientist on the Pathfinder mission and is co-investigator on the Mars 2003 rover missions.

John H. Stewart
"George R. Stewart and Science: The Perspective of a Scientist, His Son"
George R. Stewart used science as the starting point of many of his books, in particular Storm, Fire, Sheep Rock, and Earth Abides.  In writing these books, he solicited information from many scientist concerning weather forecasting, the mechanics of forest fires, the ecosystems of the Black Rock Desert in western Nevada, speculations about how the earth would change if only a few humans were left, and much more.  I witnessed his scientific curiosity when he was writing the book Sheep Rock, a novel written about an actual place, Black Rock, from which the Black Rock Desert was named.  He went on five trips to Black Rock (I went on two of them) to look at the geologic, geographical, ecological, and anthropological setting of Black Rock.  On his trips he took experts, mainly from the University of California, Berkeley, to teach him about what they could see at Black Rock.  He then took this information and used his imagination to write Sheep Rock.

Curiosity and imagination are corner stones of the books of George R. Stewart.  He had a knack of seeing relationships in different ways.  At some point in my middle career I realized that my success as a scientist was based on curiosity and imagination.  Without my really realizing it, he had passed these qualities on to me.

Dr. John H. (Jack) Stewart has had a distinguished career as the leading expert in the geology of Nevada for the United States Geological Survey. He wrote the standard work on the geology of Nevada, and prepared the geological map of Nevada.

Dave Tamori
Dave presents a hands-on experience of a visualization technique used in his work with students at Oroville High School. The process can be traced back to Leonardo de Vinci and is used by many individuals as way to access their initiative thinking processes. The participants will be guided through the technique and will experience the process of using abstract imagery to prompt insightful thinking and writing.

Dave has been teaching visual arts and coaching at Oroville High School for thirty-one years. He is the Visual and Performing Arts Coordinator, Head Wrestling Coach and advisor to the National Art Honor Society. I've been a co-director for the Northern California Arts Project, Assessor for Educational Testing Service Advanced Placement and Panel Member for the development of all of the current arts assessments exams. Dave is a 4th Degree Belt in Judo and has received many awards including Teacher of the Year.

Wyn Wachorst
"The Wonder of Science; the Science of Wonder"
As taught in schools, science is often a focus on factoids. Science should be introduced in the context of wonder-- the mysterious and awe-inspiring phenomena that will sustain interest long after the minutiae are forgotten. Beyond all the practical benefits, science is a spiritual quest in the broadest and deepest sense. Yet many people seem to lack the sense of wonder. What is the psychology of wonder?

Wyn Wachhorst's most recent book, The Dream of Spaceflight, was on Amazon's bestseller list. His Thomas Alva Edison: An American Myth was a History Book Club selection, and two of his many articles were listed in Best American Essays. He has been a speech writer for Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin and has taught history and American Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz and San Jose State.

Israel Zuckerman
“COTI”
Israel Zuckerman is the long-time coordinator of the COTI: Cultures of the Imagination workshop. He finds that CONTACT allows him to combine his secret agenda of teaching ecology and evolution with his hobbies of gaming and science fiction. He has a B.A. in Anthropology and manages a computer store in Santa Cruz, California.