Terraforming or terraformation ("Earth-shaping") is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying the atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology of a planet, moon, or other body to be similar to the environment of Earth to make it habitable for humans to live on.
Gerald Jay Sussman is the Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has been involved in artificial intelligence (AI) research at MIT since 1964. His research has centered on understanding the problem-solving strategies used by scientists and engineers, with the goals of automating parts of the process and formalizing it to provide more effective methods of science and engineering education. Sussman has also worked in computer languages, in computer architecture, and in Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) design.
Artificial consciousness, also known as machine consciousness, synthetic consciousness, or digital consciousness, is the consciousness hypothesized to be possible in artificial intelligence. It is also the corresponding field of study, which draws insights from philosophy of mind, philosophy of artificial intelligence, cognitive science and neuroscience.
Extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) refers to hypothetical intelligent extraterrestrial life. No such life has ever been verifiably observed to exist. The question of whether other inhabited worlds might exist has been debated since ancient times. The modern form of the concept emerged when the Copernican Revolution demonstrated that the Earth was a planet revolving around the Sun, and other planets were, conversely, other worlds. The question of whether other inhabited planets or moons exist was a natural consequence of this new understanding. It has become one of the most speculative questions in science and is a central theme of science fiction and popular culture.
David Kirsh is a Canadian cognitive scientist. He is a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where he heads the Interactive Cognition Lab. From 2020-2023 he was the President of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA), where he remains on the Board of Directors.
James D. Hollan is professor of cognitive science and adjunct professor of computer science at the University of California, San Diego. In collaboration with Professor Edwin Hutchins, he directs the Distributed Cognition and Human–Computer Interaction Laboratory at UCSD, and co-directs the Design Lab. Hollan has also spent time working at Xerox PARC and at Bellcore. He was elected to the CHI Academy in 2003 and received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award in 2015.
Geisel Library is the main library building of the University of California, San Diego. It is named in honor of Audrey and Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as children's author Dr. Seuss. The building's distinctive architecture, described as occupying "a fascinating nexus between brutalism and futurism", has made it an iconic and widely recognized building on campus. The library is located in the center of the UC San Diego campus.
David B. Fogel is a pioneer in evolutionary computation.
D-Wave Quantum Systems Inc. is a quantum computing company with locations in Palo Alto, California and Burnaby, British Columbia. D-Wave claims to be the world's first company to sell computers that exploit quantum effects in their operation. D-Wave's early customers include Lockheed Martin, the University of Southern California, Google/NASA, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Casey Edwin Barker Reas, also known as C. E. B. Reas or Casey Reas, is an American artist whose conceptual, procedural and minimal artworks explore ideas through the contemporary lens of software. Reas is perhaps best known for having created, with Ben Fry, the Processing programming language.
The Berggruen Institute is a Los Angeles-based think tank founded by Nicolas Berggruen.
Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design is a non-profit international educational project, founded in 2009 and located in Moscow. Strelka incorporates an education programme on urbanism and urban development aimed at professionals with a higher education, a public summer programme, the Strelka Press publishing house, and KB Strelka, the consulting arm of the Institute. Strelka has been listed among the top-100 best architecture schools in 2014, according to Domus magazine.
Accelerationism is a range of revolutionary and reactionary ideas in left-wing and right-wing ideologies that call for the drastic intensification of capitalist growth, technological change, infrastructure sabotage and other processes of social change to destabilize existing systems and create radical social transformations, otherwise referred to as "acceleration". It has been regarded as an ideological spectrum divided into mutually contradictory left-wing and right-wing variants, both of which support the indefinite intensification of capitalism and its structures as well as the conditions for a technological singularity, a hypothetical point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible.
Sascha Pohflepp was a German artist, designer, and writer whose work focused on the role of technology’s influence on the environment, often collaborating with scientists and other artists to explore this theme.
Boaz M. Levin is a Berlin-based writer, curator and filmmaker. His curatorial work deals with histories of ecology and technology and the ways these have influenced visual culture. Since October 2023, he has served as Co-Head of Program and curator at C/O Berlin, where he co-curated exhibitions such as Valie Export Retrospective, Studio Rex, the Jean-Marie Donat collection, and Träum Weiter – Berlin, the 90er. In 2022, Levin was co-curator of the 3rd Chennai Photo Biennale. In 2017, he was co-curator together with Florian Ebner, Kerstin Meinicke, Kathrin Schonegg, and Christin Müller of the 7th edition of the Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie, which takes place in Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and Heidelberg. He is an editor of Cabinet Magazine's Kiosk. His essay, "On Distance", was published by Atlas Projectos, Berlin, as part of the Next Spring series of occasional reviews. His writing has been published by magazines such as Camera Austria, Texte Zur Künst, and Frieze. He is an AICA, and has been an ICOM member. Levin has curated exhibitions at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Heidelberger Kunstverein, The Jewish Museum Munich, and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, KunstHausWien, and C/O Berlin, among other venues. Levin is the co-founder, together with Vera Tollmann and Hito Steyerl, of the Research Center for Proxy Politics.
Pinar Yoldas is a Turkish-American architect, artist and professor at University of California San Diego. She is known for art and architecture that focus on the anthropocene, futurism, and feminist technoscience.
Graph neural networks (GNN) are specialized artificial neural networks that are designed for tasks whose inputs are graphs.
Lydia Kallipoliti is a Greek architect, engineer, architectural historian, action researcher, and scholar. Her work examines interdisciplinary studies involving architecture, technology, and environmental politics.
"The stack" is a term used in science and technology studies, the philosophy of technology and media studies to describe the multiple interconnected layers that computation depends on at a planetary scale. The term was introduced by Benjamin H. Bratton in a 2014 essay and expanded upon in his 2016 book The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, and has been adapted, critiqued and expanded upon by numerous other scholars.
