Tonight at theAmerican Museum of Natural Historyin New York , Gizmodo is co - host First occur The Dream .
The event will bring together scientists like the host of Cosmos , Neil deGrasse Tyson , astronauts such as NASA AdministratorCharles Bolden , software architects likeFoursquare‘sDennis Crowley , and the writers , interior decorator and artist who inspire them . The programme is designed to showcase how imaginativeness fuels scientific and technological modification : on the interior of the Planetarium we ’ll have a visual tour of the raw worlds recently find by astronomers ; on the outside , we ’ll see simulacrum of new solar systems from imaginations of the special - issue artist atFramestore .
We ’re asking the guests — both the scientists and the dreamers — to impart to the serial we started here in the beginning this month , identify the image or fit that first inspired them . “ What was it ? ” we ’re asking . Mine was Isaac Asimov ’s Foundation trilogy .
Gizmodo is co - host the event because the situation ’s charge is to foretell the future . But beyond extrapolation , there ’s a persona for imagination ; and not just the dark scenario of environmental doommongers but a limitless futurity . In forgetful , we need to recapture some of the naivete of the nineteenth century or the other outer space age — or our own teenage phantasy .
Even a call for naivete seems itself uninstructed in a cynical climate . This might not be the fourth dimension . But we ’re ring a bend here — for three main reasons .
First , technology has become too important to go out to the engineer alone . invention is conceptual ; it requires a dream . It is no stroke that Apple — a company Steve Jobs prided on bringing the liberal arts into computing — surpassed so many more pedestrian tech industry competitors .
Second , we call for new dreams because so many of the erstwhile single are played out . Green technology have been downgraded from world - changers to tokens of dogoodery . TheMetaverse imagine by Neal Stephensonhas been realized . The personal communicators arrive — and most of them are made by Apple . On Gizmodo we have had to recognize that consumer electronics do n’t generate the same excitement in either readers or our own author . We ’re looking for the next wave too .
And lastly , it ’s time for an end to the self - compulsion and pessimism about human nature that seems to pervade our inventions . There is not just something wrong , there ’s something tediously solipsistic about a society whose main innovation has been the cataloging of itself in social media . Dystopic movies and books have dominated ever since the West ’s confidence was shaken by the Oil Crisis and subsequent economical stagnation : four 10 is long enough . Even Neal Stephenson — writer of the glum and inwards - looking world of Snow Crash — now misses the optimism of the fortunate age of science fiction .
Sure , that ’s an optimism that come up from an attachment to novels read when summer vacation and lifespan and the future tense stretch unendingly before us . But that ’s an optimism we should hold onto . The way I care for the enduring influence that Asimov has had on me . Or the style America still harbors a hopefulness go forth over from the space long time , the last time the country achieved something monumental , before everything went wrong .
But that ’s exactly the point of this labor and the outcome marking it tonight . stargazer this year are get wind Earth around other lead that were presaged in phantasy and the oeuvre of Jules Verne . Before Dennis Crowley , one of my carbon monoxide - hosts tonight at the Planetarium , create Foursquare , he was obsessed by Zelda on the Nintendo . What will Gizmodo or Foursquare or Cosmos inspire ?
First comes the dream .
what was it
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