Nanotech brainstorming weekend

hal@rain.org
Mon, 1 Feb 1999 17:16:23 -0800

Foresight Institute is having a meeting described at http://www.foresight.org/SrAssoc/99Gathering/index.html to brainstorm about the next 30 years. Participants include nanotech gurus like Drexler and Merkle, our own Max More, other extropian faves like Vernor Vinge, Ray Walford, Doug Lenat, Marvin Minsky and many other famous names.

The meeting will be organized as a "DesignShop" at knOwhere Palo Alto. The DesignShop is some sort of collaborative brainstorming methodology, and knOwhere provides a flexible workspace which can be reconfigured as needed. The web materials on this system (linked from the URL above) are pretty confusing. There is a book out about DesignShop, Leaping the Abyss, by two of the authors (not Drexler) of Unbounding the Future. Has anyone here read it?

The conference is expensive; you have to be a Foresight Senior Associate which requires a pledge of $250 a year, plus it's then another couple of hundred to attend the conference. Still it does sound like it would be a fascinating and stimulating weekend.

Hal