CSSE Seminar Series (CSSESS)
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Seminar
Building Tools as Powerful as Our Problems
Institute: Media X Program, Stanford University
Time:3:10 pm, July 18, Friday, in Room 031, Erskine Building
Abstract
We are now facing a confluence of challenging and interdependent problems
related to energy, environment and climate change, global health,
science and technology literacy, poverty, and security.
The problems are urgent and absolutely critical. However, we have
already squandered most of the early warning windows for talking
corrective action. The good news is that reasonable and at least
partial solutions to each of these problems are known, and in
some cases have been known for many years. Further, the technologies
underlying some of the potential solutions are on accelerating
exponential curves of continuous improvement. The author will review
the case that for the first time in history, our tools are becoming
as powerful as our problems. The author has been working at Stanford
University to gather collaborators that can play a leadership role
in marshalling our considerable resources to imagine, model, prototype,
test, and help implement solutions that work. The proposed system would
provide a continuously improving and immersive 3D collaboration
environment for problem solving and solution demonstration.
Summary Biography:
Neil Jacobstein is Chairman and CEO of Teknowledge Corporation, a knowledge systems software company that started in 1981 in Palo Alto. He chaired the American Association for Artificial Intelligence’s 17th Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence conference in 2005. Jacobstein became a Senior Research Fellow in the Digital Vision Program at Stanford University in 2006, and is currently a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Stanford’s Media X Program.
He has been Chairman of the 501c3 Institute for Molecular Manufacturing (IMM) since 1992. He is the principal co-author of the Foresight Guidelines for the responsible development of molecular nanotechnology, and has given technical and public interest talks worldwide on the future of nanotechnology. In 1999, Jacobstein was selected as an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow. Jacobstein was a Graduate Research Intern in the Learning Research Group at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, and a consultant in PARC's Software Concepts Group. He spent four years doing renewable energy and environmental research as a Research Associate with the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems. Jacobstein has served on the Technology Advisory Board for the U.S. Army’s Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation Command, and a variety of industry and nonprofit advisory boards. He has given seven Aspen Institute Socrates Seminars on the opportunities and risks of future technologies. He is a member of Business Executives for National Security, as well as AAAS, IEEE, ACM, and APHA.
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