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Clarke Presents: metaFUTURES

This May and June, we are excited to share Arthur C. Clarke Presents: metaFUTURES, an exploration of how humanity is using “metaverse” worlds as the frontier for human imagination, culture, and society.

Join us and our partners at Origami Air Co. at UC San Diego’s Office of Innovation and Commercialization as we host community members, scientists, innovators, and brave explorers as virtual avatars inside what we now call the metaverse, each of whom embody the ways in which these technologies can impact our empathy, compassion, equity, and imagination.
 
Each week, we explore a different theme with a community of vibrant thinkers and creators:
 
 
A residency network of meta-pioneers, research collaborators, and corporate sponsors will be joining in this learning journey in-headset from within the metaverse via AltspaceVR (contact us for more information and sponsorship opportunities).
 
We will also be livestreaming the first week, documentary-style in the spirit of Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, to our wider community via Zoom.
 
This includes:
 

Monday, May 9 at 11am (PST)

 
Explore how Gym-n-Eat Crickets, a woman-owned start-up, is using the metaverse to share more sustainable alternatives to meat (and hunt cloud berries in the Cascadian Wilds of the metaverse).
 

Wednesday, May 11 at 3pm (PST)

 
Join a meta Happy Hour with Casca Día (a meta-first restaurant) and Susto Mezcal.
 

Friday, May 13 at 5p (PST)

 
Salon discussion and exploratory tour on “Nourishing Social Justice” with Chef Olivia Hernandez (Nom Bar), Dr. Jereka Hackaday Thompson from Texas Allied Health, Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda from Urchinomics, Norway, and Greg Dulane from Blue Futures Institute, New Orleans Louisiana
 

Monday, May 16 at 5p (PST) – Register Here

 
What does an archive of metaverse assets and experiences look like, and how will people access them? Explore the challenges and opportunities with Dione “Fidget” Surdez, library and information scientist and archivist of “Afterville 2039,” a pandemic future build by pioneers in the metaverse.

 

Wednesday, May 18 at 5p (PST) – Register Here

 
Join Dione “Fidget” Surdez, library and information scientist and archivist of “Afterville 2039,” a pandemic future build by pioneers in the metaverse, and other residents for a listening party in virtual reality.

 

Friday, May 20 at 5p (PST) – Register Here

 
What makes for an inclusive, thriving, imaginative community in the metaverse? Join the pioneers of Afterville 2039 for this salon discussion.
 
Register for each of the above and join us in imagining new possibilities for the future of the metaverse!

Practitioners of the emergent field of Speculative Futures Studies use speculative forms – including, but not limited to, art, literature, and theory- to confront the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and racism in order to imagine and enact more sustainable and just futures.

Science explains it, but
art may be the key to finding it.

The Speculative Futures Collective seeks to cultivate research with faculty, graduate students, and community members using speculative cultural forms and theories to collaborate on the future of education, ecology, gender, sexuality, and race.

EXPLORE

Practitioners of the emergent field of Speculative Futures Studies use speculative forms – including, but not limited to, art, literature, and theory- to confront the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and racism in order to imagine and enact more sustainable and just futures.

Science explains it, but
art may be the key to finding it.

The Speculative Futures Collective seeks to cultivate research with faculty, graduate students, and community members using speculative cultural forms and theories to collaborate on the future of education, ecology, gender, sexuality, and race.

EXPLORE

Unlike intelligence, memory, and creativity, there is an alarming lack of coherent theory and a thin empirical literature on imagination. Why alarming? Imagination may be one of the most important keys to human flourishing and human progress, with spiritual and evolutionary adaptive benefit.

The science of imagination needs a guide for the future.

The Atlas of Imagination is the guide, focusing coherent theoretical models of imagination to drive further investigation and the tools needed for the empirical study of the neurodiversity of imagination. 

EXPLORE

Unlike intelligence, memory, and creativity, there is an alarming lack of coherent theory and a thin empirical literature on imagination. Why alarming? Imagination may be one of the most important keys to human flourishing and human progress, with spiritual and evolutionary adaptive benefit.

The science of imagination needs
a guide for the future.

The Atlas of Imagination is the guide, focusing coherent theoretical models of imagination to drive further investigation and the tools needed for the empirical study of the neurodiversity of imagination. 

EXPLORE

The Clarke Center is a research-and-practice hub, where the best insights from the neuroscience of imagination are connected with the latest in technology and put to use to unlock the transformative power of imagination across age groups, and communities to tackle the most pressing issues facing the planet.

Imagination discovers
new possibilities within the impossible.

Imagination is at the root of empathy and compassion. Imagination gives rise to hope. We aim to unleash the power of imagination to tackle the most pressing issues facing life on Earth – to envision and build a more equitable an sustainable world.
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