Institute For The Future

At the Perimeter Institute

I'm at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics for the next couple days, at a conference on "Science in the 21st Century." Needless to say, it was impossible for me not to attend.

 

Last night I did a short brainstorming and mapping event on the future of science. We traditionally do brainstorming events as part of our expert workshops, and so I'm experimenting with doing them in conferences that other people organize. For X2, the virtue is that plugging into workshops that other groups organize, and we just plug into, is easier than doing your own: as anyone who's done it can tell you, organizing a conference is really hard work.

 

What do conference organizers get out of it? A couple things. First, when we do these workshops at the beginning of an event, they serve a useful social function: they provide an excuse for people to talk and interact. Second, conferences are often implicitly interested in either the future of their fields, or at least are designed by organizers to provide participants with an overview of the current state of the field, but it's often the case that these things aren't addressed explicitly; we can make this functionality visible and public.

 

Last night's event was interesting, mainly because we had great people participating-- a nice mix of physicists, people from the library community, a couple social scientists or people interested in science policy-- and also because we were using a vast, floor-to-ceiling blackboard that gave us a LOT of space to work with. A real luxury.

 

Now, though, I have a couple days to just listen, talk to and connect with people, and improve the map.