The Global Brain Emerges

What do design engineers, IT architects, editors, artists, physicists, mathematicians, ethicists and tree-sitters have in common? They're meeting May 12-14, 2000, at the Presidio in San Francisco to inspire new scientific collaborations and sustainable business projects focusing on how the explosion of digital information technology is transforming the way we inhabit and perceive the earth. This unlikely grouping of multi-disciplined, multi-talented, multi-thinking individuals will strive to forge alliances to explore how the creative application of digital tools -- scientific visualization, interactive databases, GIS-based systems and computational modeling, as well as the Internet itself -- can open up new possibilities for environmental activism and positive global change.

The PLANETWORK conference provides "a forum for innovative people, who might not ordinarily be found in the same place, to meet, enrich and inspire each other," says co-founder Elizabeth Thompson. Among the many presenters are: Jan Hauser, principal architect at Sun Microsystems; John Helly, scientist at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego; Kevin Kelly, executive editor, WIRED magazine; Bill Pease, director of Internet projects for the Environmental Defense Fund; Duane Elgin, social scientist and author of Awakening Earth; and Ralph Abraham, chaos mathematician and creator of The Visual Math Institute.

It is the conference founders' position that two global phenomena stand out as the most dramatic aspects of our time: the dizzying rate of technological change, especially in the realm of digital information, and the staggering scale and speed of environmental degradation. As a planet-wide system of communication and interrelationship, the Internet could play a pivotal role in the search for solutions to our ecological problems.

As editor of Designfax and Medical Equipment Designer magazines, I've heard from many of you who have said that most of the current challenges we face as humans living today stem from the failure of people in our existing systems (governmental, legal, corporate, go-ahead-and-fill-in-the-blank) to foresee, acknowledge and take action to correct problems. PLANETWORK planners point out that these are all tasks that information technology may be ideally positioned to address -- especially in terms of applying these to our global ecological situation.

Should this diverse group of thinkers come up with a plan to improve our treatment of the earth, one thing is certain -- they will need design engineers to create the physical tools and infrastructure to bring these ideas to life. If you're not already involved in the planning stages, your input will be essential as projects like this proceed. Your designs connect you to the world in ways most people can't imagine. Now the Internet may provide you with just the tool you need to share your own unique visions of the future. Go for it.

-- Kimberly Chapple kchapple@aip.com

For more information:

Circle 590 - PLANETWORK Conference or connect directly to their website via the Online Reader Service Program at http://www.1rs.com/005df-590