As part of the 13th annual Subtle Technologies Festival here in Toronto, I will be giving a talk on Friday, June 4 on the subject of Rewilding Humanity.  Those of you who followed my old blog, "Age of Embodiment," will have some inkling of what this stuff is about; as will those who may have caught my OsCon speech last summer (which you can catch on YouTube here).

Here's the precis of the talk from the Subtle Technologies website:

Economic sustainability is not enough if human civilization is going to have a long presence on Earth. We need to not only reform our institutions but redefine what they are and how they operate; and we need a new vision of what it means to be human in a world where neither transcendence or apocalypse are viable options. One possibility is “rewilding”–bringing our constructed environments in line with our instinctive and cognitive needs.

This is a good description; but there's a lot more to it than that.  If you can make it to the festival, come to the event and we can discuss these and, hopefully, many related ideas.

I gave a keynote address on "the rewilding: a metaphor" at the O'Reilly Open Source 2009 convention last week.  It was recorded, and you can now watch it here:

The talk is notable for the number of times I go "um" and refer to my notes; that's mostly because I was called in at the very last minute, and was literally preparing the presentation on the plane.  I scrawled it on my iRex tablet, which you'll see me referring to as I talk. 

The key ideas--the central metaphor of "the rewilding" are part of a really big research program I'm in the middle of.  It's the capstone to all the ideas that went into two of my novels, Ventus and Lady of Mazes.  Those two books form a thematic whole, but their statement's not complete.  They need a final book, and The Rewilding will be that book--if I can pull it all together in my own mind.

O'Reilly was a bit of a testbed for that--to see if I could bring it all together into a fifteen minute talk that would make sense and be relevant.  You might think that's kind of like flying without an intellectual safety net, and it is; but life's too short, and as an SF writer, it's my job to point to new ideas, not necessarily to fully articulate them.

So try the talk, "um's" and all, and let me know what you thought.

I spent the weekend with 200 other ubergeeks at the Googleplex, inventing then executing the agenda for the Sci Foo Camp 2009 un-conference.  My own talk was on "The Rewilding:  An Alternative to the Technological Singularity," and it was pretty well rececived by the tough crowd of intellectual heavyweights I pitched it to.

Other people who were there that weekend included Maureen McHugh (who has written some of my favourite SF and whom I finally go to mee!), and intellectuals/power brokers from diverse fields, such as George Dyson, Esther Dyson, Louise Leakey, Peter Diamandis, Elon Musk, Lee Smolin, George Smoot, Lawrence Lessig, etc.  There was an early rumour that Bjork was supposed to attend, but she never materialized, at least not in any recognizable form. 

Sessions included one on new data supporting an iminent mass extinction from global warming; spaceflight speculations by Musk and Diamandis; new findings in neurobiology and cognitive science, radical animal design, etc.  Way too much for me to be able to attend them all, of course; but I'm familiar with that problem from our SciBarCamp experiments in Toronto.  The Google campus was a good setting for the event, and they had built us a "holodeck" that ran Google Earth (and Mars) on a set of wraparound big-screen HD tvs.  The food at the campus is excellent, by the way--and yes, they do have a tyranosaur on their lawn.

 I met tonnes of people, and I'll catch up with you all individually rather than in this space.  ...I guess, in trying to summarize how weird and wonderful the weekend was, I'll just give one example:  there was a guy who'd brought a hand-held mirror that shows you your reflection unreversed.  (No, it's not a device, it's just a mirror.) 

It's all set.  I'll be flying out to San Francisco on Thursday to attend the latest in Google and O'Reilly's annual un-conferences.  Science Foo Camp is an invitation-only event held for three years in a row now, in which participants evolve the theme and content of the conference on the spot.  Spontaneous talks are given, side-discussions calve off from the main conference, and it's generally just a big 'ole idea free-for-all.

I have more ideas than I can possibly use for talks and symposia, but I'm sure I'll happily get sucked into other people's worlds.  Very much looking forward to it.

Yes, this is an activity remarkably similar to the last two SciBarCamps I've helped organize and have attended here in Toronto; that's because SciBarCamp was deliberately modeled on Science Foo Camp.  So I'll be going into the event with some notion of the flavour and results; but it's also going to be on an entirely different scale, and I'm ready to be surprised.

The entire weekend went off with very few hitches--the worst being a bit of schedule crunch on Saturday, but nothing that actually stopped people from presenting.  I took a few more photos, but at this point there's a lot of other people who had much better cameras than my phone, and who were much better photographers; so I'll just point you to the Flickr page where many of the pix have been collected.

If you'd like more detail about what we discussed, you can drop by the SciBarCamp website and look at the program schedules.  We've encouraged people to blog about the event and to tag their entries with SciBarCamp, so you can track down a lot more about it at sites like technorati.

I'd like to thank everybody who had faith in us and came.  I'd also especially like to thank the other organizers, Jen Dodd, Michael Nielsen, Eva Amsen, Lee Smolin, and Jamie McQuay.  Jen and Michael were the instigators and they, Eva and Jamie did most of the work; I was just along for the ride, really.  Jen and Jamie in particular spent their own money to make it all happen, and deserve special mention for it.

We've talked about whether we're doing another SciBarCamp; there's no reason why not, it's a scheduling issue more than anything.  I hope the meme spreads, and that it becomes a regular in Toronto and beyond.

Well, the SciBarCamp's gotten off to a smashing start.  Last night over 100 people showed up at the Debates room in Hart House and we kicked off the event with drinks, shmoozing, and the ad hoc creation of our program.

Above's a picture of the introductions period, with everybody saying who they are and what their interests are.

The scrum.  Nobody was shy; it was a complete mix-up of enthusiastic and wildly diverse people.

I'll try to post the Saturday schedule later.  My favourite proposed event so far is the "Interactive Salt Lick Sculpture."  That should be interesting.

Next weekend's first SciBarCamp is now full, with well over 100 confirmed attendees.  The event's happening at Hart House, which is a magnificent location in the heart of Toronto (the University of Toronto takes up a square mile of the downtown core).

Fear not if you were hoping to come but were unable.  We want this event to be the first of a regular series.  Just make sure you follow the news at the SciBarCamp website, and sign up early!

SciBarCamp's deliberately vague schedule

The program for SciBarCamp will be decided in a collaborative way involving all participants on the opening night (Friday night).  This is when all the talks and discussions will be scheduled.

The start and finish times for each day have been decided, and are set out below.  The opening event on Friday night will be integral to the whole weekend, so please plan to attend on this night as well as on the rest of the weekend.

SUNDAY, March 16, 9:00am to 5:00pm

This is fun: I'm helping organize a “SciBarCamp” with a diverse group of local people including entrepreneurs, students, artists, and scientists.  The event will take place at Hart House at the University of Toronto on the weekend of March 15-16, with an opening reception on the evening of March 14.

SciBarCamp is a gathering of scientists, artists, and forward-thinking members of the public for a weekend of talks and discussions.  The goal is to create connections between science, entrepreneurs and local businesses, and arts and culture.  The themes are:

• The edge of science (eg, synthetic biology, quantum gravity, cognitive science)
• The edge of technology (eg, mobile web, ambient computing, nanotechnology, web 2.0)
• Science 2.0 (open access, changing models of publication and collaboration)
• Scientific literacy and public engagement (eg, one laptop per child project, policy and science, technology as legislation, science as culture, enfranchising the poor, the young, the old)

In the tradition of BarCamps, otherwise known as "unconferences", (see BarCamp.org for more information), the program is decided by the participants at the beginning of the meeting, in the opening reception.  Presentations and discussion topics can be proposed at the SciBarCamp website or on the opening night.

The talks will be informal and interactive; to encourage this, speakers who wish to give PowerPoint presentations will have ten minutes to present, while those without will have twenty minutes.  Around half of the time will be dedicated to small group discussions on topics suggested by the participants.  The social events and meals will make it easy to meet people from different fields and industries.  Our venue, Hart House, is a congenial space with plenty of informal areas to work or talk.  There will be free wireless access throughout.

Our goals are:

• Igniting new projects, collaborations, business opportunities, and further events.
• Intellectual stimulation and good conversation.
• Integrating science into Toronto's cultural, entrepreneurial, and intellectual activites.
• Protoyping a model that can be easily duplicated elsewhere.

Attendance is free, but there is only space for around 100 people, so please register soon by sending an email to Jen Dodd (dodd.jen@gmail.com) with your name and contact details..  Include a link to your blog or your organization's webpage that we can display with your name on the participants list at www.SciBarCamp.org.

More information can be found at www.SciBarCamp.org.