2003 Telluride Tech Fest

July 2003

Herb Morreale (BS 1991) is one of the driving forces behind the Telluride Tech Festival and provided the following announcement:

The 2003 Telluride Tech Festival is scheduled for August 8-10, 2003. Our honorees and special guests this year include:

• Arthur C. Clarke: famed science fiction writer with more than 50 million books sold and author and screenwriter of 2001: A Space Odyssey along with Stanley Kubrick. Inventor of geostationary communication satellites in 1945. Sir Arthur will be beaming in (3D holographic image, he will see us and hear us as we will see and hear him) from Sri Lanka for a presentation and Panel Discussion concerning the future of space exploration. Arthur's program is sponsored by the World Bank and the government of Sri Lanka.

• Charles Townes: inventor of the laser and Nobel Laureate. Former Provost of MIT and presently University Professor at Berkeley where he has worked extensively in astrophysics where he discovered the first polyatomic molecules in deep space proving that the universe is all made up of the same elements. Townes is member of the Board of Directors of SETI, General Motors and former Chairman of the Presidential Science Committee during the Apollo Program. National Medal of Science winner, National Inventors Hall of Fame; Engineering and Science Hall of Fame.

• Freeman Dyson: former head of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton (physics school started by Albert Einstein) and inventor of the Orion Spaceship while at General Atomic that weighed 4000 tons and was powered by nuclear bombs. The Orion was designed to carry 300 humans into deep space and build a community on Mars. Credited with the unification of three versions of quantum electrodynamics that changed the world of physics. Known as the leading authority on the possibilities and nature of extraterrestrial civilizations. Author of Disturbing the Universe; Weapons of Hope; Origins of Life; and Infinite in All Directions.

• Bruce Murray: Chairman and Co-founder of the Planetary Society (with Carl Sagan and Louis Friedman), which has 70,000 members dedicated to exploring the solar system. Professor of Planetary Science at Caltech and member of the Mars Team on Mariner 4, 6, 7 and 9. He was team leader of the Mariner 10 flyby of Venus and Mercury and participating scientist on the Mars Global Survey Mission. Since 2000, he has been the co-producer of the PBS series Closer to Truth.

• Gale Anne Hurd: new category award honoree for technological achievement in media and film. Hurd is the inventor of the "event film." Producer and screenwriter of Terminator Series, whose film career has generated two dozen films including Alien; The Abyss; Hulk, Armageddon (largest grossing movie 1998) which have generated more than $2 billion in revenues. She serves on the Board of Women in Film; The Ocean Conservance; Seakeepers Society; and the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences.

• Tod Machover: new category award honoree for technological achievement in music. Machover is called, "America's most wired composer" by the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Boston Globe, and the Wall Street Journal. He is director of music at MIT Media Lab, inventor of hypersting musical instruments. He has composed five symphonies including the Brain Opera and Toy Symphony. Educated at Juilliard and formerly Director of Musical Research at the Ircam Institute in Paris. Tod will perform a interactive symphony on Friday evening.

• Manuel Castells: Professor of Communication and holds the Annenberg Chair of Communication at the University of Southern California. He is recognized as one of the world's leading social thinkers and researchers. He specializes in writing and discussing the social, cultural and political ramifications of change generated by technology and science in the world. Born in Spain and formerly Professor of Communications at the University of Paris, University of Madrid, and advisor to the United Nations. Author of the acclaimed book, The Rise of the Network Society, called by Wired Magazine, "a must read" if you want to understand the Digital Divide.

• KC Claffy: principal investigator for the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) and resident scientist based at the University of California San Diego Supercomputing Center. CAIDA is a collaborative organization supporting cooperative efforts among the commercial, government and research communities aimed at promoting a scalable, robust Internet infrastructure. Their efforts are sponsored by Cisco, DARPA, U.S. Dept. of Energy, NSF, Sun Microsystems, WIDE, the University of Colorado, UCSD, and the University of Auckland, New Zealand. KC has published extensively on the subject and particularly with respect to commercial ISP collaboration/cooperation and sharing of analysis resources. KC received her PhD in Computer Science from UCSD in 1995.

• Ray Kurzweil: former Tech Fest honoree and inventor of the first computer to read books to the blind (along the way invented the flat bed scanner, first word recognition program, first speech recognition program), first musical digital instrument to pass the blind test (Kurzweil Organ). National Medal of Technology Winner, Lemmelson Prize Winner, National Inventor Hall of Fame and author of the best selling science/technology book: The Age of Spiritual Machines.

• Jill Tarter: former Tech Fest Honoree and Director of the search for extraterrestrial life at SETI. Real life character played by Jodi Foster in the movie Contact.

• Lewis Branscomb: former Chief Scientist for IBM, Director of the National Bureau of Standards (Nixon), Chairman of the Presidential Space and Science Committee during the Apollo Program (Johnson), Chairman of the National Science Board (Carter) and Chairman of the Research, Development and Technology Committee (Reagan). Branscomb received his PhD in Physics from Harvard and is now Professor Emeritus of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, on the Board of Directors of Mobil/Exxon, MITRE, Lord Corp, and C.S. Draper. In 2001, Branscomb was awarded the Vannevar Bush Award from the National Science Board.

Tickets are still available. Tickets are $200 each and include Saturday picnic. For more information visit www.techfestival.org or call 970-728-7000.