Panel

Biophysicist Shawn Douglas and designer Chaim Gingold discuss their inspirations and strategies for building computational tools that introduce new ways to play and think. Recently, they have been collaborating on Gelbox, a simulation and visualization tool for teaching Gel Electrophoresis—a notoriously hard to learn yet foundational tool in biology. This project grew directly out Shawn’s […]

What is the best operating system to run a planet? Who governs? Who owns? Who rewards and punishes? How can we evolve law and regulation to reflect the larger systems within which we live? What can the regulation of terrestrial ecosystems teach us about our opportunities and limitations as a species in stewarding each other […]

What is the nature of time? Is time real? Is time an invention? Can we control time? Is the universe aging? Will it die? Could we live forever organically? In simulation? How could/will the Singularity affect human time? Is consciousness infinite? What’s the half-life of a civilization? What’s the half life of planet? How can […]

How do we get there? How do we get there without using the earth as our fuel? What is the ideal fuel source? Will InterPlanetary travel require fundamentally new motion and energy technologies? Is nuclear tech a realistic solution? Why? Should space crafts be autonomous vehicles? Will space cities be planetary establishments or will we […]

When considering the origins (and possibilities) of life in space, there are many complex and interweaving questions to find the answers for. How likely is it that we will find life in space? How to we even calculate that likelihood? Where do we look, and what are the best methods to use in our search? […]

What is intelligence? If we as humans consider ourselves to be the pinnacle of intelligence, at least in terms of tangible accomplishments as a species, do we expect to find this same level and occurence of intelligence mirrored in any extraterrestrial life we come across? Do we expect that intelligent life to be organic, or […]

All life on earth is social life, what are its limits? Are our social institutional systems the best there are? Could you have one planet that was one nation? How can we optimize equality, efficiency as a function of system architecture and size? Are terrestrial institutions the best that the universe has to offer? Do […]

Do we have the intelligence, socially and technologically to save the earth? Is it too late? Do climate scientists have to become climate engineers? Do we have to radically change the way we live and consume to allow for continued life on earth, or will technology save us? Is talking about interplanetary travel irresponsible? Is […]

First Panel Discussion of the 2019 InterPlanetary Festival. How do we prepare – physically and psychologically – for impossible, exhilarating, and terrifying feats? What goes through the mind before a solo trek across the South Pole, a free climb up a seemingly insurmountable mountain, a manned mission to Mars?  

Using our innate senses of creativity and invention, we can tell stories about all kinds of places that never were and might never be. We can talk about what life is like in a human colony on Mars or chronicle what would happen in an alternative history where World War II never took place. We […]

Time often feels like it’s moving at a different pace. Five minutes can feel like an eternity when you’re waiting for the heat from a habanero pepper to fade, but three hours can feel like no time at all when you’re having dinner with an old friend. Children seem to grow up at an astonishing […]

Orangutans, octopuses, and ravens might appear to have little in common, but they are among the most intelligent species on Earth, capable of recognizing faces and using tools. For animals of lesser individual intelligence, they often make better decisions by using the collective wisdom of the entire group. Flocks of birds rely on group intel […]

The uniquely cataclysmic outcomes that climate change, food shortages, and once-in-a-lifetime weather events will have on Black people is a question that recent history has already begun to answer. Hurricanes Maria and Katrina, the 2010 Haitian earthquake, among other crises have made it clear that Black people and people of color will shoulder the burden […]

For InterPlanetary’s opening panel discussion, David Krakauer will lead a discussion between Ted Chiang, James Gleick, and David Wolpert on Complex Time, and representations of time: How time is encoded, described, represented, modeled and observed.After providing a brief introduction to some of the representational dichotomies of time – (1) fundamental vs. emergent time and (2) […]

Jessica Flack introduces our panel discussion: When will we need a Theory of Intelligence? Machine learning algorithms have been surprisingly successful at performing tasks that we assumed required high levels of intelligence, such as predicting protein folding (AlphaFold), as well as creative expressions like poetry with language prediction models (GPT-3). Do those successes imply that […]

From rising inequality and the impacts of geopolitical conflict, to the immense challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, we are in a period where new thinking about human systems has become essential. Now, in the early part of the 21st century, we are at a time of political and social change that […]

David Krakauer introduces our panel discussion: Will space limit human performance? With the Artemis mission on the horizon and Elon Musk’s insistence on crewed Martian missions by 2030, considering how humans might live in space is at the forefront of our global collective mind. But what is required of those intrepid volunteers to flourish in […]