CONTACT is a unique interdisciplinary conference which brings together
some of the foremost international social and space scientists, science
fiction writers and artists to exchange ideas, stimulate new perspectives
and encourage serious, creative speculation about humanity's future ...
onworld and offworld.
Each year we meet to promote the integration of human factors into space
age research and policy, emphasize the interaction of the Arts and Sciences
and their technologies, and develop ethical approaches in cross-cultural
contact, whenever and wherever it occurs.
The first CONTACT occured in Santa Cruz,
California, in 1983. It began as a conference exploring the connections
between anthropology and science fiction, because, it seemed to me, anthropologists
study alien cultures and science fiction writers create them. We attracted
the best of both fields right from the start: e.g., award-winning writers
Larry Niven, C.J. Cherryh, Jerry Pournelle, Poul Anderson, Dave Brin and
Greg Bear.
Our most reknowned anthropologists were Paul Bohannan, past president
of the American Anthropological Association and Dean of Social Sciences
at USC, Ben Finney, chairman of the Anthropology Department at the University
of Hawaii and former NASA fellow, and Reed Riner, editor of "Cultural
Futures Research." Joel Hagen, Rich Sternbach, William K. Hartmann
and other artists transformed our ideas into visions of the future.
Over the years, however, CONTACT has evolved into an international and
interdisciplinary professional organization and nonprofit scientific and
educational corporation. It now includes space scientists from NASA, JPL,
Los Alamos and SETI, as well as social scientists, educators, philosophers,
lawyers, humanists, futurists and students and enthusiasts in all fields..
We are proud of the distinguished professionals
in the sciences and arts who devote their time and energy to CONTACT. Our
work has been presented at scientific meetings, published in professional
journals, featured in the national media and nonfiction books and texts,
and documented in a PBS video.
Go to Conferences
Simulations: The Bateson Projects
Since 1983, we have developed several simulations, called "Bateson
Projects," as professional thought experiments, scientific design studies
and educational curricula for all levels. Some of these are described below.
Cultures Of The Imagination (COTI)
An experiment in creation - participants design an integrated world,
alien life form and culture, and simulate contact with a future human society.
One team constructs a solar system, a world and its ecology, an alien
life form and its culture, basing each step on the previous one and utilizing
the principles of science as a guide to imagination. The other team designs
a future human colony, planetary or spacefaring, "creating and evolving"
its culture as an exercise in cultural structure, dynamics and adaptation.
Through a structured system of progressive revelation, the teams then simulate
-- and experience -- contact between the two cultures in real time, exploring
the problems and possibilities involved in inter-cultural encounters.
This simulation, which began at the first CONTACT conference in 1983
as a thought experiment for professional scientists, writers and artists,
has developed into an educational curriculum for college and junior high
school levels, which have been funded by NASA and the Smithsonian Institution.
COTI has also been featured in OMNI and in a PBS documentary and has become
the foundation of a three-year international design project for professional
scientists.
Go to COTI
Solar System Simulation (SolSys)
The Solar System Simulation, originated at CONTACT VI in 1987, was developed
into an intercollegiate curriculum at Northern Arizona University as an
honors course in Anthropology and Engineering. Since 1990, it has included
student teams from many colleges and universities around the globe.
The teams represent colonies in a simulated future human community in
space. Cabrillo students have participated for credit every year since its
inception and our team traditionally inhabits the L-5 Colony circling Earth.
Teams communicate via Internet e-mail, websites and a Multiple User Domain
(MUD), a text-based, virtual reality program. Students are directed and
encouraged by their local faculty advisors and by a board of professional
consultants in the social and space sciences.
The students build a learning environment in virtual space and explore
communication problems in their community of remote "colonies."
The computer-supported, interactive virtual reality environment in which
the the simulation is conducted can be dramatically demonstrated. An audience
visits sites in the future Solar System, where they can tour a city in space,
walk on the moon and talk to Martians.
This simulation received national recognition in 1994. A group of federal
agencies representing education for the future, including the Coalition
for Networked Information and the American Association of Higher Education,
selected SolSys, out of a wide field of proposals, as one of two projects
in the country to be presented at the EDUCOM convention. The judging committee
stated that the project "represents best practices in the use of networking
and networked information in teaching and learning."
Go to SolSys
Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence Simulation:
(simSETI)
What would happen if our search for extraterestrial intelligence suddenly
turned out to be successful?
Beginning in 1991, invited experts produced our first remote (i.e.,
communication-only) contact simulation. Over a three-year period, a team
of scientists, writers and artists, organized by Poul Anderson, created
a credible and coherent extraterrestrial civilization. Its representatives
produced and sent messages to Earth from their home planet light years away.
An Earth receiving team, representing various national and global communities
of interest, first detected the signal's presence during CONTACT IX and
worked for two years, via Internet and connected virtual networks, to understand
it, simulate our world's reaction, and formulate a response.
At CONTACT, the public followed the progress of the scenario via daily
newscasts and press conferences, and eventually , after the final broadcast,
were introduced to the "extraterrestrials,' who described their world
and its cultures, displayed their artefacts, and explained their motives
and expectations.
SimSETI was an attempt to construct a reasonable and realistic simulation
that might be of practical value in the event of an actual first contact
of the kind that NASA's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project
anticipates. We hoped to provide a test of the protocol which has been developed
by SETI for such an eventuality. Several of those involved in devising that
protocol, e.g., Ben Finney (Anthro/ U Hawaii) and Seth Shostak (SETI), were
present for the demonstration.
Jim Funaro, Founder
Department of Anthropology, Cabrillo College, Aptos CA
95003
"CONTACT: Cultures of the Imagination" is a nonprofit
scientific and educational corporation.
© 1997,1998,1999,2000 CONTACT: Cultures of the Imagination,
Inc. All Rights Reserved.