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
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.

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
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.

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 serves on the board for the Oregon Fellowship of Reconciliation, a state chapter for one of the oldest peace and justice advocacy groups. And he also serves on the board for CONTACT!

Jim Funaro
Founder of CONTACT, Jim 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
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 and Polar Lander. Joel is presenting a folio of prints derived from the MER pancam panoramas. These Mars landscape views have been selectively cropped from larger full pans and manually processed to present consistent color and detail.

Jeroen Lapré
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.

Abstract: 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
Larry Niven has been a full-time writer since leaving UCLA in 1963. A worldwide bestseller, he is best known for the legendary Ringworld series, which The Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction called "the most energetic future history series ever written". A multiple winner of both Hugo and Nebula awards, Niven was once named by Arthur C Clarke as his favorite author, and his rigorous scientific consistency has earned a reputation as the premier modern author of "hard" SF. Niven, in conjunction with a group of science fiction writers known as SIGMA, began advising the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as to future trends affecting terror policy and other topics. An original member of our organization, Larry was a veteran of the First CONTACT in 1983, our keynote speaker in 1995, and has been a continuing supporter of our activites.

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
Bad to the Bone: Horrors! Can Our Genes Help Make Us Evil?
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."

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.

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 currently an independent scholar and writer. His biography of historian, odologist, toponymist, and pioneering ecological novelist George R. Stewart is in the hands of a literary agent. Scott is a member of the CONTACT and WIDER FOCUS educational futures organizations. Honors received include listing in Who's Who In America.

Carlo Séquin
Carlo, 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. He has also collaborated with artists, and has created several designs for geometric sculptures.

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 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 shift how things are viewed in a negative way. 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.

Carol Stoker
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.