Philip Aaberg
"CONTACT: Past, Present and Future"
Phil had to cancel his personal appearance this year but will offer a remote contribution to the Panel session
Philip Aaberg, a renowned songwriter and pianist, is a Grammy and Emmy Award nominee, a recipient of a PBS Development award, and a world class composer and performer, who displays a remarkable mastery of forms 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 solo concerts with the Boston Pops and the Latvian National Symphony and appearances with such luminaries as Elvin Bishop, Peter Gabriel and John Hiatt. His recent albums, produced by Sweetgrass Music, are "Live From Montana" and "Blue West."

Karen Anderson
"Could China see a new Mandate of Heaven?"
Predictions of a fundamentalist dictatorship usually point to the Abrahamic religions, with such examples as Lord Protector Cromwell's Puritan England and Ibn Saud's Wahhabi Arabia. In science fiction, the classic is Nehemiah Scudder's Evangelical Christianity in Heinlein's "If This Goes On..." But the potential for such a dictatorship exists in some Asian religions, including Shinto in Japan, Zoroastrianism in India, and Daoism in China.

China traditionally looked at the emperor not as an Imperator (military commander) but rather as an a Pontifex Maximus ("chief of pontiffs", they being the priests who arranged traditional ceremonies) and Augustus ("consecrated"). It was his duty to mediate between the people and the gods; he reported to them at the Altar of Heaven as the head of a household reported family events to his ancestors at memorial tablets on the household altar, to make the customary offerings, and to ensure that Right Principles inspired his advisors, as the head of a household instilled Right Principles into his family. If famine, flood, invasion, or other upheavals brought down a dynasty, it was clear that the One Man had failed to uphold virtue, and the Mandate of Heaven by which he ruled had been withdrawn.

The overthrow of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty by an unstable coalition, and the period of conflict that followed, looks like a classic case of the interregnum following such a withdrawal. But the present government is losing support and shows its fear of religion-based threats by forbidding public discussion of the Dalai Lama and public practice of Falun Gong. Considering their control of all methods communications, is it possible to create a political movement reviving the original form of the beliefs which, fused with Confucianism, guided dynasties from its adoption by the Han to the overthrow of the Shun by the Manchu invaders? I will suggest means by which this could be done.

Karen Anderson has taken part in numerous Contact conferences. With her husband, the late Poul Anderson, she created scenarios for several COTI-style exercises, including ones for Contact Japan, ConFrancisco (SF Worldcon) and two Asimov Seminars. She is a life member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and an investitured Baker Street Irregular. Her formal education includes classical and modern languages and military cartography; otherwise, she is an autodidact polymath whose interests run from archeoastronomy to zymurgy.

Penny Boston - Keynote Speaker
What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
Dr. Penelope J. Boston is Associate Professor of Cave and Karst Science and Director of Cave and Karst Studies at New Mexico Tech, Socorro, NM. Her areas of research include cave geomicrobiology, microbial life in highly mineralized environments, unique or characteristic biominerals and biosignature detection. Additionally, she is involved in astrobiology and the search for life beyond Earth. Cave formation mechanisms on other planetary bodies is a topic of particular interest to her. Her background includes geology, microbiology, atmospheric chemistry, global biogeochemical cycling, and climate/life interactions.

William J. Clancey
Being Scientific on Mars: The Challenges and Accomplishments of the Phoenix Lander Mission
In school we are taught that the "scientific method" is a procedure for relating data, hypotheses, experiments, and theory. In practice "being scientific" on missions is an ongoing accomplishment in a world of shutes and ladders. The scientific method itself is adapted and improvised, as scientists work within the constraints of computer programming, spacecraft resources, and communication timings—while negotiating among themselves, preparing publications, and needing to keep the public informed about their progress.

Based on observations of the Science Operations Center in Tucson and analysis of reports during the mission, I present a perspective on the challenges of doing science with the Phoenix lander. How did the scientists construct standards, goals, procedures, and responsibilities to fit the instruments available? How did the technology facilitate or stymie their efforts? In the end, I am left with some conundrums about how we are to balance costs, scientific return, and our ideals.

William J. Clancey is the Chief Scientist for Human-Centered Computing in the Intelligent Systems Division at NASA Ames. He leads several partnership projects with Johnson Space Center, including automating routine aspects of file management between Mission Control Center and the International Space Station, and the EVA Metabolic Rate Advisor, a voice-commanded assistant for astronauts.. Clancey's scientific interests include understanding the cognitive and social nature of human exploration and team work; the neuropsychological architecture of conceptualization; the cultural evolution of cognition; and the varieties of animal consciousness.

Clancey holds a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University. In addition to his many books and publications, he is currently writing a NASA Special Publication for the History Division on how working with the Mars Exploration Rover has changed the nature of field science.

Dr. Yvonne Clearwater
"Social and Cultural Dimensions of Space Exploration: Let's Talk!"
During the Apollo era, NASA psychologists and human factors professionals were principally involved in mission planning and support at the level of assuring sustained human endurance and crew survivability. Moving forward through the first extended stays in space by American astronauts on Skylab in the mid 1970's, and later through the design and development of the International Space Station, NASA Space Human Factors professionals were permitted a widening scope of influence within the context of crew well-being, productivity and overall performance.

We are entering an era of renewed mission planning and global enthusiasm for the human exploration and eventual settlement of planetary bodies beyond Earth, starting with our return to the Moon. As we do so, we will progress beyond conventional Space Human Factors investigations to multi-disciplinary consideration of deeper social and cultural issues.

At the threshold of this global endeavor, NASA has committed to an expansion of "Participatory Exploration," as a means for wider dissemination of NASA's knowledge and to identify opportunities to facilitate public participation in the US space program. Simultaneously, the Agency is working to open-up the lines of communication with professional collaborators and the public at large through rapidly evolving modes of Social Media. At the intersection of these opportunities, participants in the 2009 Contact meeting will be invited to offer and discuss exploratory ideas for the development of a possible new area of inquiry into the "Social and Cultural Dimensions of Space Exploration."

Dr. Yvonne Clearwater is a NASA Project Manager and Principal Investigator at the Ames Research Center. Starting at the inception of the International Space Station (ISS) Program, she established the NASA Habitability Research Program and served as Senior PI in for multi-disciplinary, distributed team investigations leading to design guidelines for the ISS and beyond. She has served as NASA project manager in a wide array of endeavors including strategic communications, education, and most recently for concept development of the first of its kind American Student Moon Orbiter. She holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California, with specialization in design research and communications.

Allan Combs & Ben Goertzel (co-presenting)
"Naïve Physics and Multiple Intelligences"
Our presentation addreses the relationship between the world an intelligence lives in and the structure of the mind of the intelligence itself. The idea is that if one knew something about the structure of the environment an intelligence had evolved for, this would presumably tell you something about the patterns in the mind of the intelligence. (A problem now under discussion for the creation of AGI--artificial general intelligence.)

So, if one knew something about an environment the questions one could ask are such as: 1) what would be the "naïve physics" for that environment (which might be quite different from ours); 2) what kind of mind could best learn that sort of naïve physics. Hypothetically, if one created an AI based on the naive physics of a certain environment, that AI would be the best agent to recognize any alien intelligences operating in it, because it would "speak their language" (metaphorically of course ). In terms of consciousness and dynamics one could say that the consciousness-attractors of an organism adapted to a certain environment share many structures with the dynamical attractors of the environment itself.

Allan Combs is a consciousness researcher and neuropsychologist at CIIS and Professor Emeritus in Psychology at the University of North Carolina-Asheville. He is author of over 100 articles, chapters, and books on consciousness and the brain, including The Radiance of Being (2ed): Understanding the Grand Integral Vision; Living the Integral Live, winner of the best-book award of the Scientific and Medical Network. Changing Visions: Human Cognitive Maps Past, Present, and Future, with Ervin Laszlo, Vilmos Csanyi, and Robert Artigiani; Mind in Time: The Dynamics of Thought, Reality, and Consciousness, with Mark Germine and Ben Geortzel; and the forthcoming Consciousness Explained Better: An Integral Understanding of Consciousness.

Ben Goertzel, Ph.D., is SIAI Director of Research, responsible for overseeing the direction of the Institute's research division. He has over 70 publications, concentrating on cognitive science and AI, including Chaotic Logic, Creating Internet Intelligence, Artificial General Intelligence (edited with Cassio Pennachin), and The Hidden Pattern. He is chief science officer and acting CEO of Novamente, a software company aimed at creating applications in the area of natural language question-answering. He also oversees Biomind, an AI and bioinformatics firm that licenses software for bioinformatics data analysis to the NIH's National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases and CDC. Previously, he was founder and CTO of Webmind, a 120+ employee thinking-machine company. He has a Ph.D. in mathematics from Temple University, and has held several university positions in mathematics, computer science, and psychology, in the US, New Zealand, and Australia.

Bruce Damer
Report From Digital Space: Protecting Life on Earth, Projecting Life into the Universe
Bruce Damer returns for his thirteenth year at CONTACT with some exciting projects to report on including: work with NASA and Rusty Schweickart to define missions to asteroids (Near Earth Objects or NEOs). DigitalSpace helped NASA with a mission design to take humans to the surface of a NEO. With Rusty and his B612 Foundation DigitalSpace created visualizations of "gravity tractor" and NEO deflection solutions which were presented to the United Nations. Bruce's team also worked on Lunar excavation, and modeling spacewalks for the Hubble servicing mission and final ISS assembly flights.

The Biota.org SIG (part of the Contact Consortium, an offshoot of CONTACT) has spawned Project EvoGrid, an international effort to create an Evolution Simulation Grid wherein an "origin of artificial life" event might be observed. This work is an outgrowth of Bruce's first Contact (1995) talk on Our Contact with Soft Life, the first "Exo-Terrestrials" and is a serious effort to create life-simulation environments useful to understand our origins, pathways for the future of Terran life and provide insights for SETI. Lastly, Bruce will cover the Virtual Worlds Timeline, a project to chronicle the origins, evolution and future of virtual worlds, an area that CONTACT and the Contact Consortium has had involvement in for almost fifteen years.

Kathryn Denning
"CONTACT: Past, Present and Future"
Kathryn had to cancel her personal appearance this year but will offer a remote contribution to the Panel session
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 include the ancient, the animal, and the alien. She is a professor in the Anthropology department at York University in Toronto, where she teaches archaeology and thinks a lot about SETI. If you have any extraterrestrial artifacts, please feel free to donate them to her as-yet-nonexistent collection.

Carter Emmart
"One Thousand Days at Sea"
Carter will demo the Digital Universe with emphasis on interplanetary travel and a live satellite phone call to Reid Stowe, a sailor at sea for 1000 days non-stop without any ports of call as a Mars mission analog. Our special Sunday afternoon session, "One Thousand Days at Sea," will feature a live interactive conversation between Carter Emmart and Reid Stowe on his sailboat, nearly 700 days into his project, a Mars-analogue ocean journey.

Carter Emmart 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.

Chris Ford
Exploring Your Depths - CG Astronomical Simulation
The application of cinematic CG visual effects technology to astronomy enables immersive 3-Dimensional interpretations of astronomical imagery that is both scientifically accurate and visually faithful to the original data. In this presentation Chris will explore the usage of CG visualization techniques, explain the fundamentals of the technology, present some notable milestones, highlight the state of the art, and discuss where it may lead in future.

Chris Ford is currently RenderMan Business Director at Pixar Animation Studios with over 20 years experience in computer graphics (CG) software development, media production technology, product management and business development. Previously at Autodesk, Alias, Silicon Graphics, and Wavefront Technologies, Chris has managed most of the professional CG modeling, animation, and rendering software tools used in contemporary feature film special effects and scientific visualization including Wavefront, Maya, 3ds max, and RenderMan. Chris is also a keen astro-photographer focused on the application of 3D visualization techniques to astronomical imaging.

Gus Frederick
"Earth as Organism - Humans as ?"
The scientific Gaia theory, (named for the Greek Earth Goddess), sees the Earth as a physiological system made up from all living organisms and their material environment. Each living thing, plant or animal, has evolved or the eons to serve specific functions to keep Gaia "alive." But the major question is, what is the role of the human species in the mix? The more pessimistic may see us a virus or cancer. This visual presentation attempts to propose another view of how we fit in with Gaia.

Gus Frederick is a multi-media artist, animator and technical illustrator who lives in Silverton, Oregon with his cat, lots of books and tons of 78rpm phonograph records. He currently works as a Training and Development Specialist for the Oregon Department of Human Services. A long-time space enthusiast, he is a member of the International Mars Society's steering committee, and is active in his local community Grange.

Jim Funaro
"Globalization, the New Face of Colonialism: The Future of Cultural Diversity"
Diversity is the basis for evolution. The dangers of the loss of biological diversity due to human action has been widely argued by biologists and environmentalists recently. The resulting specialization reduces the genetic options available, and thus the overall adaptability of life on the planet.

Globalization and its potential production of a "monocultural" world presents similar risks for the loss of cultural diversity. Anthropologists are experts in human alternatives, the wide variety of ways that different societies have, in the past and present, solved the problems of adapting to their natural and social environments. I would argue that a major reason for our biological success is the multicultural nature of our species, the diversity of solutions to problems that humanity carries in its collective toolkit. Some of the characteristics and consequences of globalization will be explored in this presentation.

Founder of CONTACT, Jim Funaro is professor emeritus in anthropology at Cabrillo College, which has honored him with its highest award for teaching excellence. Publications demonstrating his research interests are "Anthropologists as Culture Designers for Offworld Colonies" and "On the Cultural Impact of Extraterrestrial Contact." His personal and professional approach to life combines the sciences and the arts. Besides his graduate degrees in Anthropology, has a BA cum laude in Literature and is a published poet; he won the American Anthropological Association's 1997 prize for poetry with "The Dancing Stones of Callanish."

Joel Hagen
"From Newton to Mars: Light, Color, Cameras and Telescopes"
The nature of light, color and perception draws a thread of continuity through the history of photography and astronomical observation. Follow that thread on a journey from Newton’s dorm room at Cambridge through remote stretches of pre-revolutionary Russia to the frozen polar region of Mars.

Joel Hagen is an artist and imaging specialist who divides his time between physical and computer media. Joel is a founding member of the International Association of Astronomical Artists, an award-winning sculptor and animator and an instructor of computer graphics at Modesto Junior College. Joel has worked with the NASA Ames teams on MER, Pathfinder, Polar Lander and Phoenix.

Al Harrison
"Seafaring & Spacefaring: Maritime Prototypes for Living and Working in Space"
Al will be leading off our special Sunday afternoon session of "One Thousand Days at Sea," which will feature a live interactive conversation between Carter Emmart and Reid Stowe on his sailboat, nearly 700 days into his project, a Mars-analogue ocean journey. Al’s opening talk will discuss maritime analogues for space missions in general and introduce Reid’s venture as an example in progress.

Albert A. Harrison, psychology professor at UC Davis, has conducted extensive research on next-generation space missions, including a return trip to the Moon and initial human exploration of Mars. He recently received a large grant from NASA to investigate ways of integrating behavioral health research with flight operations.

Randall Hayes
"Aliens Among Us? Tales of Neural Curiosities"
The world feels unified to us because of the tight coordination of the neural modules inside our own heads, and the looser coordination through language between heads. Communicating with someone whose configuration of neural modules has been changed by genetics or injury feels alien, and could offer insights into how to deal constructively with Other, even more different, intelligences.

Randall Hayes has degrees in biology and neuroscience, which he uses to inform his son's drawings of aliens, monsters, and robots. He currently teaches Analytical Reasoning as Assistant Professor of University Studies at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University. He also teaches at the NC Governor's School, a summer enrichment program for high school juniors.

Howard Heard
"Zen and the Vision of the Blind Film Editor"
Humans are unavoidably musical creatures. When we build a movie-world of our own design where time and space are as elastic as we wish, how do musical sensibilities guide our editor's hand? This presentation reveals the “jazz” of dramatic editing by ear——not only by hand and eye; it shows the way we can “see” with our ears——the Zen of editing with eyes closed. We take a look at the powerful role that music plays in a cinematic construction——sometimes in scenes where there will be a musical score, and sometimes even where there won't.

Howard Heard is a native of southern California and studied motion picture production at UCLA. He has an avid interest in the sciences as an amateur observer, as well. Still a resident of Los Angeles, he has done film editing work on forty-five features, more than fifty hours of prime time episodic television, pilots, miniseries, four documentaries, and other short films and commercials. He also serves on the faculty of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena with students who hope to become the film directors of tomorrow.

Joe Lambert
"Digital Storytelling - Giving Purpose to Pixels"
Digital Storytelling has come to represent a method, a style and a value system that has informed the practice of thousands of educators, social workers and communications professionals. Supporting people to explore their lives in short films, created with the minimum elements of photography, the voice, soundtrack and a few effects, has helped to lift creative writing from the page to the screen. The approach of the Center for Digital Storytelling seeks to use personal story sharing as a transformative process in constructing identity and re-framing the experience of loss and trauma. CDS Founder Joe Lambert will discuss the necessity for a revolution in our thinking about emotional courage, reflective practice and the learning process.

Joe Lambert is the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Digital Storytelling. Since 1993, he and his colleagues have developed a unique computer training and arts program known as the Digital Storytelling Workshop. Joe has been the lead in offering the process in 45 U.S. states and 21 countries, assisting in the completion of more than 10,000 video works. Joe has helped to adapt Digital Storytelling in many forms, including web sites, CD-ROMs, DVD, short films and videos, google maps and cell phone based tours. He has worked in countless contests including with youth, elders, the disabled, educators, community-based organizations, broadcast organizations, and social issue campaigns.

Joe has authored and produced curricula in many contexts, including the Digital Storytelling Cookbook, the principle manual for the workshop process, and the text entitled Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community (Digital Diner Press 2002, 2006). Prior to his career in New Media, Joe was the successful producer, director and writer in theater, having been Executive Director of the People's Theater Coalition (1984-86) and founder and Executive Director of Life On The Water (1986-1993).

Jeroen Lapré
"Fragile Planet: A Cutting Edge Digital Planetarium Production"
Jeroen takes us behind the scenes of an emerging technology in production - computer graphics production for a digital planetarium show. He will share his experience of applying feature film visual effects techniques to a project close to his heart: an immersive experience that combines a strong environmental message a with science-data driven visualization of space.

Jeroen Lapré has been with Industrial Light & Magic since 1996. As a Technical Director at ILM he is responsible for the assembly and rendering of visual effects in feature films including CG lighting of the 3D elements and integrating them with the actors, sets, props and locations. His film credits with ILM include Star Wars episodes 1 and 2, Artificial Intelligence, Hulk, T3, The Time Machine and many others. In addition to his work at ILM, Jeroen is working with Sir Arthur C. Clarke on a film version of Clarke's story, Maelstrom II.

Candace Lowe (Co-Presenting with Gerald Nordley)
"Robert Heinlein and Us; Future Histories in Science Fiction"
C. Sanford "Candace" Lowe is a science fiction writer and most recently co-authored a series of novelettes about the making of a black hole with G. David Nordley. Formerly a newspaper reporter in Boston, a deputy sheriff in Arizona and an airline pilot in New Mexico, Lowe currently works in IT at Stanford University. When not writing, she collaborates in experimental music with her husband, and tutors students studying English as a second language.

Most of the works of the late science fiction author, Robert A. Heinlein fit into a common background which editor, John W. Campbell, called a "future history." The name stuck, and Heinlein prepared a chart of then-future events into which he fit various stories. Many other writers, including CONTACT's Poul Anderson, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournell, have written multiple stories within a common background of future events, though few have done so with as much attention to detail as Heinlein. Some kind of projection of future events is at least implied in every story set in the future, but a well-formed future history includes major historical happenings, technological and sociological developments that are consistent among a number of stories, in addition to the events of the stories themselves.

Gerald Nordley and Candace Lowe, writing as G. David Nordley and C. Sanford Lowe used the future history of G. David Nordley's other fiction as background for their "Black Hole Project" series and will discuss their experience in writing within a more or less consistent future history. There are many advantages to a future history; it saves writer's time because much less has to be invented for each subsequent story. But there are problems as well; sometimes things that might otherwise be interesting have to be ruled out, and, every event being related to every other event, the opportunity for inconsistencies goes up exponentially with each story published.

The result is that few future histories are rigorously consistent, and smoothing over the rough spots is often left as an exercise for the readers. Thoughtful future histories often have anticipated, here and there, things that have indeed come to be, but we stress that a fictional future history, like any work of science fiction, is not an effort to predict the future. They are rather a framework for fiction created for all the reasons one creates fiction. They often contain events that writers do NOT think will happen, nor want to see happen, but which may provide a justification for particularly exciting, interesting, or cautionary tales. Finally, future histories are fun to do for anyone who thinks about the future.

Larry Niven
CONTACT veteran Larry Niven has had to cancel at the last minute.
He says he will be with us in spirit.

Gerald Nordley (Co-Presenting with Candace Lowe)
"Robert Heinlein and Us; Future Histories in Science Fiction"
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.

Barbara Oakley
"Too Kind"
Recent genetic and neurological findings have revealed that altruism andempathy have a profound genetic and neurological basis. Some individuals, unfortunately, possess so much altruism that they undergo almost unbearable abuse. Other ways that altruism can become pathological include co-dependency, the pathological selflessness seen in anorexia, and even in such unusual behaviors as animal hoarding. Professor Barbara Oakley uses evolutionary theory--as well as an unusually adventurous background that has earned her the nickname of a "female Indiana Jones," to knit together disparate pieces of research that point toward answers to some of the most compelling questions in the social sciences and humanities.

Barbara Oakley is an associate professor of engineering at Oakland University in Michigan, where she does research on the effects of electromagnetic fields on biological tissues, as well as on novel antenna designs. One of the few women to hold a doctorate in systems engineering, Oakley is a recent vice president of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. She has been at the forefront of efforts to expand the bioengineering profession and has won teaching-related awards from such organizations as the National Science Foundation.

Oakley's work has appeared in publications ranging from The New York Times to the IEEE Transactions on Nanobioscience. Barbara is an associate professor of engineering at Oakland University in Michigan, where she does research on the effects of electromagnetic fields on biological tissues, as well as on novel antenna designs. One of the few women to hold a doctorate in systems engineering, Oakley is a recent vice president of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. She has been at the forefront of efforts to expand the bioengineering profession and has won teaching-related awards from such organizations as the National Science Foundation. Oakley's work has appeared in publications ranging from The New York Times to the IEEE Transactions on Nanobioscience. Her most recent book is "Evil Genes."

Jim Pass
"Which Road Shall We Take? Astrosociology and Collaboration with the Space Community"
As humanity moves on to the second fifty years of the space age, the question as to where it is headed should become a renewed concern. Will humans live in space or not? Will they make serious plans explore deep space any time soon? Of course, space advocates in professional and lay circles alike remain restless with the pace of the U.S. space program as well as the advancements of the commercial space companies. Currently, we face a crossroads of sorts regarding which road to take. Is it better to follow the same well-known course of focusing almost solely on issues related to the physical/natural sciences?

Alternatively, we must ask ourselves whether we should alter our current course and become more expansive in our view of space exploration. The new road entails inclusion of the social/behavioral sciences, humanities, and the arts. It is somewhat familiar to us in theory though rare in practice. The new course involves the development of astrosociology, but more importantly, the collaboration between scientists working in both major branches of science. The new road represents a new and uncertain direction for space exploration from the perspective of space engineers, for example, but the collaborative nature of the new course will open up new possibilities produced through the synergy that results from the input of two historically isolated approaches. Following the same road will result in largely predictable and slow-paced change while the new road will likely lead us to new vistas never before imagined.

Jim Pass holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Southern California. He is the founder of astrosociology and the CEO of the Astrosociology Research Institute (ARI). In May 2008, ARI was established as a California nonprofit public benefit corporation with a mission to develop astrosociology through conducting research and engaging in other activities as well as assisting others, especially students, to pursue this relatively new multidisciplinary field.

Doug Raybeck
"The Nature of "Human Intelligence" ... and that of 'Others'?"
Human intelligence emerges from the neural complexity of our species coupled with necessary connections to senses and to our endocrine system. However, while the emergent quality of intelligence is probably a necessary condition, we can imagine alternatives to our pattern. By imagining the intelligence of aliens, we can come to better understand ourselves.

Douglas Raybeck received his Ph. D. in anthropology from Cornell University. He is Professor of Anthropology at Hamilton College. Author of several books and numerous articles, he is known for being a wonderful person and almost as articulate as Seth Shostak.

George Raynault
"Tomorrow, The Day After Contact "
Beep Beep. Communications have come a long way since Sputnik's first Beep-Beep. What if we suddenly receive a stream of extremely condensed data through SETI? Are we prepared to react *intelligently* to this sudden and potentially advanced information? What Stocks would you want to be holding the day *after* that initial Contact? George has spend many years thinking about the Effects of Contact on our personal selves, our systems, our culture and our technology. He will outline some of the more interesting ramifications that Contact would actually bring.

George Raynault is a successful entrepreneur as well as a motivational speaker and trainer. He has read science fiction for over 40 years. He brings to the Invitation to ETI group outstanding entrepreneurial and problem-solving skills. Allen Tough notes that "compared to other people whom I know, George spends more time doing excellent thinking about contact with ETI than almost anyone else, and asks particularly thoughtful and big questions."

Reed Riner
Reed Riner is Professor of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University, where he regularly teaches courses about the future, and is a founding board member of CONTACT. His talk will introduce the power of the timeline method, and will note previous 'inventions' that have changed how we represent experience/ reality to ourselves - e.g., invention of perspective illustration, from flat map to globe, etc. He will also discuss the Kondratief/ Braudel / Wallerstein CWS theory and include some remarks about how this method bolsters the predictive potential/capability of the social sciences.

Kim Stanley Robinson
"Climate Change and the Pursuit of Happiness"
Kim Stanley Robinson is a science fiction writer who lives in Davis, California. He has published fourteen novels and four story collections, which have won many awards, and been translated into twenty-three languages. His Mars novels (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) were international bestsellers. He was a member of NSF's Antarctic Artists and Writers Program in 1995, and the Sequoia Parks Foundation's Artists In the Back Country in 2008, when he was also named a Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment." His next novel, Galileo's Dream, will be released in the U.S. in January of 2010. "It's no coincidence that one of our most visionary science fiction writers is also a profoundly good nature writer." -Los Angeles Times

Don Scott
Donald M. Scott, retired NASA Educator, teacher and ranger is working on a biography of historian, odologist, toponymist, and pioneering ecological novelist George R. Stewart. Scott is also interested in the role that Independent Scholars play in the creation of the future.

Carlo Séquin
"Recognizable Earthly Art?"
Samples of art work from the last 25 millennia of Earth's history will be examined from the perspective whether these pieces might be recognizable as "art" -- or at least as "something special" -- by a distant future civilization or by some visiting extraterrestrial intelligence, who might find these artifacts in isolation, possibly slightly damaged, and without the benefit of a museum to provide context, or a catalog to provide explanations.

In this harsh test, would Serra's "Torqued Ellipses" be seen as an art installation or as some left-over plates from a ship building project? Would Rothko's giant canvasses be recognized as path-breaking paintings, or seen as a tryout canvas to find the right tint for painting the walls of a room? Would Joseph Beuys' installations be understood as art or simply be seen as messy construction sites? From this point of view: What might be the verdict on our current trends in media art?

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 some artists, and has created several designs for geometric sculptures. For this activity he has coined the term "Aesthetic Engineering". In 2003 he 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
"Space Colonization: Manifest Destiny or Pipe Dream?"
It's a widespread assumption implicit in everything from science-fiction to the mission of the National Space Society: our descendants are destined to colonize space. After ten thousand generations of living in the "crib" of planet Earth, Homo sapiens is on the verge of crawling out of its natal environs and extending its presence to the planets and -- eventually -- the stars. But can this grand idea really hold up to careful scrutiny? And if not -- if space remains a territory that we can never penetrate -- what consequences does that have for where our species will be ten thousand generations from now?

Seth Shostak 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
"The End of Intelligence"
The definition of a new concept can add immensely to our understanding by shifting how things are viewed. Similarly, there are also concepts that by their nature create a negative shift how things are viewed. In other words, for these negative-utility concepts we would be better off without the concept existing - without that concept having the opportunity of shifting perspectives.

I will argue in this talk that intelligence is now such a concept. It fundamentally puts the emphases on an individual and shifts it from the shared knowledge, communication and reasoning of the shared cognitive ecosystem. I will describe alternative concepts for cognitive ecosystems and show their power for, for example, humanity's current shared cognitive ecosystem.

Michael Sims is Research Scientist with the Intelligent Systems 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 the agent for autonomy, 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 part of a participating science team on the Pathfinder mission and is co-investigator on the Mars MER rover missions.

Carol Stoker
"The Phoenix Mission: What Really Happened"
Last year Carol gave a talk on the planned mission. This year she will discuss the actual mission: What we did, what we discovered, what we tried and failed to do, and what we should have done but did not try, and what we learned. The presentation will also consider habitability assessment.

Dr. Carol Stoker is a staff scientist in the Space Sciences Division at the NASA Ames Research Center in California. She is a lead scientist on the Phoenix mission whose four principal science teams include Biological Potential, Geology, Chemistry and Minerology, and Atmospheric Science. Dr. Stoker leads the Biological Potential working group responsible for evaluating the biological potential, or biohabitability, of the polar landing site. Her Mars-analog drilling experience and research into life in extreme environments on Earth, together with her development of the virtual reality technology that enhances the control of mobile rovers, make her uniquely qualified to participate in the exploration of the Polar region of Mars currently underway by the Phoenix mission.

Melanie Swan
"Future of Life Sciences"
A futurist's look at the current status of science and technology research in a variety of life sciences areas and what may be expected in key fields such as genomics, personalized medicine, synthetic biology, health social networks, longevity research and virtual world life sciences.

Melanie Swan is a futurist and hedge fund manager based in Silicon Valley. Her work focuses on emerging science and technology areas including life sciences, virtual worlds, computing, economic futures and open source communities. Recent projects: Future of Technology, Bioengineering: Making Life from Scratch, Biology Futures, Economic Fallacies of Future Technology, Economics of the Future: Roadmap 2050, Comprehensive Virtual Worlds Introduction and Update and Data Visualization in Virtual Worlds.

Previously, Melanie founded market aggregation startup GroupPurchase and held management positions at RHK/Ovum, iPass, J.P. Morgan, Fidelity and Arthur Andersen. She has an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from Georgetown University.

John W. Traphagan
The History of Anthropology as a Potential Analogy for SETI Research
Throughout much of its history anthropology has explicitly focused its intellectual gaze upon the understanding of seemingly “alien” others whose languages, beliefs, patterns of living, and social structures have been viewed as being remote from the societies of the industrial West--England, France, Germany, and the US--in which the discipline developed. In the formative years of anthropology, ethnographers did not normally have the capacity to be in direct contact with the others who were the object of their studies.

In this presentation, I suggest that one of the most potent ways anthropology can contribute to SETI is through analogy; in the case of anthropology, this can be accomplished by using an analysis of its own history of contact as a framework for thinking about potential contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. One important contribution that anthropology can make is to point out that rather than simply an act of discovery, initial contact with any extraterrestrial intelligence will also be a context in which knowledge is generated; initial contact will be interpreted through the lenses of our own cultures and the theoretical frameworks that are in vogue among intellectuals and others at the time contact occurs.

John W. Traphagan, Ph. D. is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Taming Oblivion: Aging Bodies and the Fear of Senility in Japan (State University of New York Press, 2000) and The Practice of Concern: Ritual, Well-Being, and Aging in Rural Japan (Carolina Academic Press, 2004), and co-editor of Imagined Families, Lived Families: Culture and Kinship in Contemporary Japan (State University of New York Press, in press), Demographic Change and the Family in Japan's Aging Society (State University of New York Press, 2003) and Wearing Cultural Styles: Concepts of Tradition and Modernity in Practice (State University of New York Press, 2006). His work has appeared in many scholarly journals, including Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders, Research on Aging, Ethnology, the Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology, the Journal of Anthropological Research, and the Journal of Adult Development.

Doug Vakoch
"You Don't Say: Sex and the Voyager Interstellar Recording"
As we ponder the appropriate content for interstellar messages, most often we think about what we want to include. Just as illuminating, however, is what we choose /not/ to say. The images on the Voyager Interstellar Recording, for example, portray a civilization that is ambivalent about sexuality. While a high proportion of pictures in that message detail the biology of reproduction, there is little acknowledgment, for instance, of the diversity of sexual expression within Humankind. The presentation closes by considering commonalities in the depictions of some core human experiences--of sexuality, aggression, and suffering--in interstellar messages, and what this portrayal reflects about our civilization.

Doug Vakoch of the SETI Institute is Director of Interstellar Message Composition. Doug coordinates an international team of scholars from the arts, sciences, and humanities to ponder how we might create messages that would represent Earth's diverse cultures. With a doctorate in psychology and degrees in comparative religion and the history and philosophy of science, Doug contemplates the deeper human significance of SETI and astrobiology.