summ( )n

Distant Light Forum will invite participants, both practicioners and theorists from over the glove to discuss the role of Russia in the future of the world. During two days in November 2009 both the speakers and participants of the event will engage in a dialog between different opinions and worldviews, different disciplines and voices, all about the future of Russia, and humanity.

There is a chance that Summ()n’s team will also contribute to the event, either in a form of a seminar/session, or an interactive installation to explore the possible futures of Russia.

Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, a nice collection of essays and papers exploring the cross-roads between philosophical debates and sci-fi.

“I’ve always said that ‘science fiction’ is a lousy name for that field; it’s really philosophical fiction: phi-fi not sci-fi! This book proves that with its penetrating analysis of the genre’s treatment of deep questions of reality, personhood, and ethics.” – writes Robert Sawyer. A

There are all kind of starry names in the book, from sci-fi gods like Isaac Asimov to philosophy gods gods like Plato and Rene Descartes (and philosophy princes like Daniel Dennett or David Chalmers), to just stars such as Ray Kurzweil. I found one piece, by Alvin Goldman, most striking; I didn’t know about this text before and read this short excerpt from his “Book of Life” with amusement. See in full below

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We do ‘People Research’ to understand to understand people’s behavior and attitudes today: we design and conduct ethnographic studies and contextual observations, individual and group interviews, co-research and people involvement in design and innovation, and performative research. We never stop at a ‘gathering data’ stage, but also develop tools and methods to translate our findings into actionable insights for our clients.

We do Future Studies: gather opinions and stories about the possible futures, material artifacts and symbolic manifestations of the emerging futures in different cultures and practices. We also help to make sense of all these data by developing creative scenarios and foresights.

We develop and conduct Serious Games to explore the futures: these customized games help people to enact various scenarios of the futures and experience new qualities, probe new roles, activities and interactions, and develop and master news skills for the future.

We construct interactive and immersive environments, both off- and online, to let people experience new possible ‘qualities of the future’, and to help them to both discover for themselves and communication to others new future possibilities.

We present our ideas and findings at various events and gatherings, often enriching them with interactive sessions and demo-games. This often leads to consulting activities in the areas of people research and future studies for innovation.