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Next
Event
Friday, August 22, 2008, 07:00 PM: Simulations of Society with Loren Cobb
Loren Cobb will present his peculiar 15-year journey into sociological model-making for various military entities, including US Southern Command, the Swedish Ministry of Defence, the British Ministry of Defence, the United Nations, and a miscellany of Latin American countries (Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, ...).
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Past Events
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Date
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Title
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Description
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Friday July 25th, 2008
Now that the part of the brain responsible for optimism has been identified, it seems fair to ask, when we look into the future, are we really looking at the future, or are we looking at biases in our own brains?
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday June 27th, 2008
For June we're going to sit around the campfire at Annie's place! And divine the future by firelight.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday May 23rd, 2008
The unmet needs of today are the business opportunities of tomorrow. Find out why clean tech will weather the current economic downturn, and how entrepreneurs are stepping forward to rescue the planet. Recent MBA graduate Denise Coté offers a glimpse at the sustainable technologies, services, and innovations that will be emerging on the market in the next few years.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday April 25th, 2008
Space is an infinite territory into which humans will migrate in the millennia to come.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday March 28th, 2008
Can the US collapse economically? This month we'll be looking at the ideas of Dmitry Orlov.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday February 22nd, 2008
The word "Education" has a double meaning. In one sense it means to learn. In the other, it means to get a credential for some career purpose.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday January 25th, 2008
The Future of the World Economy
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday November 16th, 2007
With: David Grinspoon from the Denver Museum of Science And Nature.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday October 26th, 2007
Moore's Law is the doubling of computer processing power every 2 years or so. How long will it continue?
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday September 28th, 2007
How Do We Get There From Here? With Richard Brenne -- Brrrp!!! Richard Brenne will be unable to make it to tonight's meeting.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday August 24th, 2007
I was originally going to call this topic "The Future of Marketing" but people said "No, the topic goes beyond [traditional] marketing" -- to include "the news" (PR, Fox News, etc), political "marketing", scientific research -- both what is researched and what is presented to the public as "the truth" -- and ultimately, what is "truth" and what is our perception "reality" itself?
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday July 27th, 2007
At our last meeting, we spent most of our time talking about heart transplant surgery, and didn't have time to talk about the more "futuristic" topics: Stem cells, gene chips, and so on.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday June 22nd, 2007
For June, Sarah Kellnhofer will be describing her heart transplant surgery experience.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday May 25th, 2007
We decided this topic at the end of our last meeting on Nanotechnology. The two topics seem to go hand in hand, so we're going to do them back-to-back. Let everyone who you think might be interested in AI know about this meeting!
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday April 27th, 2007
This month we have an open-ended discussion on the wonders and risks of nanotechnology.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday March 23rd, 2007
Stuart Compton will be joining us in March to talk about the future of massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds. Stuart was art director for Everquest 2, one of the most popular online games of all time. He's worked for all the big game companies, and is now starting his own, Idyllon. See Crazybull.com for more about Stuart. Stuart has deep knowledge and strong opinions about how multiplayer games should be done. He will tell us all about the problems he sees with online multiplayer games, and how he plans to fix them. He believes online multiplayer games have only lived up to a fraction of what they promise to deliver in the future. This promises to be an exciting discussion!
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday February 23rd, 2007
Frosty Wooldridge will be joining us in Frebruary to talk about overpopulation. He writes: "An average of 8,200 people are added to our country every day via annual net gains in US births at 1.0 million and immigration at 2.3 million--legal, illegal and their births. Soon past the mid-century, those 200 million more Americans will be struggling for dwindling resources, water, food and a diminishing quality of life. In a western state like Colorado, a drought in 2050 will become a DISASTER along with many other consequences.
"Where is America headed? According to 60 Minutes, we have one million homeless children struggling in our inner cities today. Why can't we take care of their needs even today? What will be the fate of another 200 million people who create homeless children? How many is too many?"
Bring your thinking caps, because Frosty has promised his talk will be a challenge to conventional assumptions and will require an open mind and critical thinking!
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday January 26th, 2007
Doug Robertson will be joining us in January to talk about how the invention of the computer is ushering in a new renaissance -- the beginning of civilization. Doug, the author of two books about the future, The New Renaissance and Phase Change, has done absolutely unique work analyzing the information processing capacity of many civilizations throughout history. His work has surprising implications for the future. Come and find out!
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday November 17th, 2006
What will entertainment of the future look like?
- HDTV? Home theater? Photorealistic video games? Fully immersive virtual reality?
- social impacts of broadcast/download
- personalised entertainment though games or interactive films
- copyright and ownership issues
- the reduced cost barrier to people making and distributing their own work (aka YouTube)
- going out or staying in and the feelings of being overwhelmed with choice in what to do on a Friday night.
Of course, the best place to be on a Friday night is at the Future Salon.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday October 27th, 2006
Today we strive to answer the question: Who in the past predicted the future correctly? Did they use the right conceptual models, or were they just lucky?
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday September 22nd, 2006
Topic "How predictable is the future, anyway?" Are there inherent limits to how predictable the world can be? Do the laws of physics and probability impose limits on the predictability of the universe? Can technology really be predicted? What about business, the markets, politics, and our personal lives? Do we think we understand the world better than we actually do? Do we foolishly think we can predict the future better than we actually can?
I (Wayne) will be presenting ideas on the limitations of human thinking from the book Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Nicolas Taleb. You are welcome to bring any ideas you have or read about about randomness, determinism, and predictability.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday August 25th, 2006
Annie Mannering will be leading a discussion on "The Future of Conflict Resolution". The discussion will focus on the prospects for peaceful conflict resolution in the future.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday July 28th, 2006
A discussion of the future of religion per "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" by Sam Harris.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday June 23rd, 2006
Global warming -- global climate change -- we've all heard about it. It's the subject of our discussion using Tim Flannery's new book "The Weathermakers" as the launch platform.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday May 26th, 2006
"The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century" by James Howard Kunstler followed by dinner. Book Details
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday April 28th, 2006
Book discussion of Seth Lloyd's new book, "Programming the Universe" followed by dinner.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday March 24th, 2006
There are several exciting discoveries being made about how the brain works at the anatomical level. This discussion will cover how research is conducted and discoveries are made, and how this knowledge will be used for future AI systems.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday February 24th, 2006
Amanda Hargis will be leading an informal talk on "The Future of Machine Translation" -- recent technological breakthroughs in the ability of machines to translate from one language to another.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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Friday January 27th, 2006
This will be the first official Rocky Mountain Future Salon meeting, a discussion group on a variety of future-related topics including accelerating change, technical singularity, intelligence amplification and other contemporary aspects of computing and science. Potential questions for discussion to be brainstormed and circulated before the meeting.
Full abstract and meeting notes.
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