from: Slate.com

Last week, Future Tense took part in Emerge, a conference at Arizona State University that is dedicated to designing the kind of future we want to live in. (ASU is a partner with Slate and the New America Foundation in Future Tense.) As part of Emerge, participants in assorted workshops created videos, journals, plays, and more to imagine different parts of our future.

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The past weekend saw EMERGE 2013 at ASU.  The theme was “The Future of Truth”, and there was a level of carnival creativity rarely seen in the rather stolid world of academia; there were dancers, full body 3D scanners, philosophy in public, and similar insanity.

A full accounting of the speeches and events that went on at EMERGE is beyond me, but I’d like to note a few highlights. Brad Allenby remains eminently quotable and provocative, playing clips from 2001: A Space Odyssey and advising us not to make out with strange monoliths. Claire Evans of YACHT gave a dangerously smart talk on how rock and roll is a post-modern cult for the 21st century. In a panel on “The Myth of the Future”, Bruce Sterling declined to found a sci-fi cult (dammit! I’d bring the Kool-Aid), while Betty Sue Flowersdiscussed global myths and Brian David Johnson mediated between the two, advising us to take control of our own future stories.

My part of EMERGE was a workshop called “Truth and Atrocities: What is the Future of Investigating Human Rights Violation in the Age of Facebook?” which Dan Rothenberg, a legitimate human rights lawyer and expert on truth commissions, was kind enough to let me help out with. Truth commissions are part of what is called ‘transitional governance”, the process of taking a country from a period of dictatorship or civil war (and associated atrocities) and building civic society and robust democratic institutions. They aren’t war crimes tribunals, as people are rarely charged with a crime, but they are instead intended to lay a common factual truth of what happened, to give voice to victims, and allow forgiveness of perpetrators so that the culture can heal and move forward.

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After experiencing firsthand the 72 hour Emerge 2013 festival I am still hard pressed to express exactly what just happened. I liken Emerge to a reengineered petri dish whose occupancy willingly entered its confines by fearlessly climbing to its upmost edge and jumping in headfirst. I sincerely doubt that even the curators of Emerge know precisely what this cohesive containment of unbridled creativity will produce. I am equally positive that this temporal unknown is by design.

What better way to celebrate the sciences and the arts while facilitating their potential for the advancement of human kind than Emerge? In mass the event demonstrates that at its core creativity is not merely a function of social status, scholastic achievement or international stardom. Ingenuity is basically a formula comprised of attributes that as a whole encompass the underpinnings of the human condition. Generally speaking those attributes are the compulsion to dream, the resolve to grind out that phantom afterthought and the overarching determination to thrust the fruits of such intimate labors into the void of cavernous, insatiable hunger that feeds on us all – the future.

Although I suspect the impetus of this colossal brain-fest is actually an amusement mechanism for a particular, sizeable intellect (more on Mr. Bruce Sterling in a bit) I do see the fingerprints of brilliance pressed upon every sentient moment that Emerge provides. The Emerge event’s seemingly rudderless, but tempered environment has a truncated lifespan. The tangible pressure of time swiftly fleeting at the instant the festival begins keeps the current moving. Do to the purposeful blurring of various academic disciplines there is only one way forward. That path entails chipping away at those precious moments with the omnipotent tool we have lurking within our skulls. At journey’s end the thought-wealth is disseminated to everyone and everything. A sharp example of “Emerge bounty” is when those who may never have had the chance to do so before discussed the visual properties of color and its relation to a colorblind Cyborg’s ability to hear color (that latter observation is courtesy of Cyborg and Emerge guest, Neil Harbisson).  Arizona State University is at the forefront of this interdisciplinary unification and I cannot honestly say if Emerge is a response to it, the cutting edge of it or if this is all interlocking happenstance. What I can say is that Emerge is a reflection of what the learning environment should be. In that sense Emerge is the future of truth.

We come to truth by various methodologies. One of the most ancient and threadbare seems to be marginalized at all costs in our present society. To achieve truth we first must ask a question based upon what we know. To reach back into the deep recesses of inquisitiveness and demand the unknown to show itself or be forcibly pulled out of obscurity into the forefront of conciseness takes courage. Such an endeavor is best served by allowing all thinkers to do what they do in a single, coordinated effort. Emerge guest Sam Arbesman’s presentation brought forward the phenomena of “hidden knowledge”. As I understood it the theory outlines how it is impossible for any one person to know everything. Due to that certainty knowledge can be lost and thus fractures exponentially. Emerge is the counter weight to that phenomena. The festival endeavors to eradicate the potential for knowledge loss by building the translucent walls of this Emerge shaped petri dish. That structure allows for the once discombobulated to conjoin into something greater than the sum of its parts.

As for my place in all this it is apparent that the nascent “E” that comprises the Emerge logo is now tattooed upon my inner child’s forehead and it kind of hurts…thanks a lot Joel, Ed, Merlyna, Dan and Braden! Then again I am one who believes that the old adage of “stretch and grow” applies to the mind. A manifestation of that truism was borne out in real-time via a chance encounter with the ASU Center for Science and the Imagination’s Visionary in Residence, Bruce Sterling. I had not known of him until we first spoke last Thursday evening over art and cocktails. The boisterous, unabashed beauty of that man’s mind needs to come with some sort of well-endowed, intergalactic warning system. Bruce’s generosity in person is only matched by his light speed tempo when behind a podium and at center stage. Take heed because hanging with Bruce has an affect akin to what I would imagine NASA astronauts encounter when they strap their frail bodies into a G-Force simulation/training contraption in order to ready themselves for the necessary trauma induced by the bone crushing pressures met during actual liftoff. Regardless, I unaffectedly suggest you wing it and say hello to Mr. Sterling should you ever get the chance. Just do so knowing that when chatting with Bruce the probability is great for faces to be stretched, minds to be blown and you may feel a little queasy afterward. At its finale it is alight and worth the likely dynamic recompilation of all you thought you knew pre-encounter because just like attending Emerge the exercise will sharpen your wits and rightly challenge your notions of humanity.

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We need a New Story. A big one. One that humans can agree on, that addresses no less than our place in the universe, and what constitutes right action in our rapidly accelerating future. Right now, religions of various stripes have the only significant claim to overarching Stories. Nonbelievers have pointed out the flaws in religious claims, but they have no counter Stories to offer. It is not enough to reject outmoded Stories; what we really need are better and even more compelling Stories. We urgently need a new Story about the origin of life and mind that explains why we exist, what our lives mean, why suffering happens, and where we’re headed as a species. It has to be grounded in observation and reason rather than superstition and dogma, and it has to be one that can be widely accepted as a guide to meaning and action. We’re going to take a big swipe at creating that Story in this workshop.

Workshop: Creating a Big Story That Makes Sense of the Human Condition. This three day workshop sought to answer how humans will perceive humanities place in the universe and how we will reconcile our mortal lives in the future. Are we given purpose? Do we define our own purpose? What is our connection to others, the planet, and universe?

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