Tech, Innovation & Society - The Creative Process: Technology, AI, Software, Future, Economy, Science, Engineering & Robotics Interviews

"So the idea of the multiverse, as you all know, is a pretty big idea in physics right now. Many physicists are thinking about interpreting quantum theory in terms of the multiverse or many-worlds interpretation. Max Tegmark, for example, has the idea that there's what he calls a Level IV multiverse. He thinks that mathematics is fundamental. So the fundamental reality is just mathematics, and in...

Donald D. Hoffman is a Professor of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of The case against reality: Why evolution hid the truth from our eyes. His research on perception, evolution, and consciousness received the Troland Award of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution of the American Psychologi...

"I think certainly we're going to go through 1.5 degrees Celsius. I think the best estimate is probably somewhere around 2032 or thereabouts, the early 2030s. And at the current rate we're going, we'll go through 2 degrees Celsius in the mid to late 2050s. Now there's certainly time to slow that rate of increase down, and we could easily push the 2 degrees Celsius threshold out to 2070 or 2080. An...

Kevin Trenberth is a Distinguished Scholar at the National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder and an Honorary Academic in the Department of Physics, Auckland University in Auckland, New Zealand. From New Zealand, he obtained his Sc. D. in meteorology in 1972 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a lead author of the 1995, 2001 and 2007 Scientific Assessment of Climate Ch...

“All the holders of solutions, all the innovators could be a startup or a big company, can submit their solution to us, and the solution will be analyzed by our group of experts. We have external and independent experts, about 370 of them, and they will observe three criteria: Is it a solution that exists today and is credible today? Because we don't want to have vague ideas for the future. We wan...

Psychiatrist, aviator and explorer, Bertrand Piccard made history in 1999 by accomplishing the first ever non-stop round-the-world balloon flight, and a number of years later the first round-the-world solar-powered flight. Piccard has dedicated his life to demonstrating sustainable development opportunities. He is Founder and Chairman of the Solar Impulse Foundation, which has assembled a verified...

"How do we actually get deployment of clean technologies everywhere around the world with the urgency that's needed, at the scale that's needed is an incredibly daunting challenge. We do have a lot of the technologies. We haven't deployed them as fast as we would hope, but that seems to be changing. Solar is the fastest growing energy source in the world right now.  We are starting to see mov...

Dr. Charles D. Koven is an Earth System Scientist, working in the Climate Sciences Department at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He investigates feedbacks between climate and the carbon cycle. Dr. Koven’s primary research focus is on high-latitude feedbacks to climate change, and in particular the role of soil carbon in permafrost soils, and its response to changing climate. Dr. Koven i...

“One thing I do know is that over-compressed music is distorted music and distortion has an introduction of harmonic frequencies that absolutely create an inurement and inability to discern certain sounds and basically make people deaf. Bottom line, new music is over-compressed, ultra-distorted, and even at low levels, will create deafness. And it's a scientifically proven, and that means we've go...

Cynthia Daniels is a Grammy and Emmy award-winning producer, engineer and composer working extensively in film, television, and music. Her career has led her around the world, initially specializing in orchestral pop from Big Band Jazz to Broadway, and then crossing over into producing records for young and seasoned artists in the rock, country, and folk-rock world. She is owner and chief engineer...

“So at SOURCE, we have one core technology, which is called a SOURCE Hydropanel. If you look at it, it looks like a solar panel, but what it really does is it pulls the water vapor out of the air, and then condenses it into liquid water, which we then mineralize for health and taste, and then bring to the end customer - whether that's a village in a remote part of the world or an office building o...

Neil Grimmer is Brand President of SOURCE Global, innovator of the SOURCE Hydropanel, a renewable technology that uses the sun to transform water vapor in the air to clean, safe and perfectly mineralized drinking water. The Public Benefit Company’s mission is to bring perfect drinking water to every person, every place, and Neil leads its marketing, consumer packaged goods and last-mile water solu...

"Capitalism and technological innovation have brought a higher standard of living and greater health to the people of the world. That's inarguable. That's absolutely true. It's a combination of capitalism, imperialism, and technological innovation that have raised all boats in their way and increased standards of living and so on. People like Stephen Pinker make this argument. There are various ki...

Roy Scranton, is the award-winning author of five books, including Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization, Total Mobilization: World War II and American Literature, and We’re Doomed. Now What? He has written for the NYTimes, Rolling Stone, The Nation, and other publications. He was selected for the 2015 Best American Science and Natur...

"All of the technologies necessary to solve a great deal of problems have already been done. The issue is having the political will to make them actually happen. Capital won't do that because it's more advantageous financially to have the problem continually move and then just kind of fix it here and then move it over there and then fix it over there and then move it back over here.” David A. Bank...

David A. Banks is the Director of Globalization Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY and the author of the forthcoming book The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America published by University of California Press. He is also a delegate to the Troy Area Labor Council and the co-host of the podcast Ironweeds. "All of the technologies necessary to solve a great deal of prob...

"There's actually an entire subfield of degrowth scholarship that's called degrowth and technology, which looks at technology's role in these sociological transformations pursued by degrowthers. My master's research focuses on looking at social media through a degrowth lens. Specifically, I'm using concepts in the literature called "conviviality", which was first formulated by Ivan Illich, an Aust...

KC Legacion is a Master of Environmental Studies candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. His research presents a reimagined understanding of social media through the lens of degrowth—this project will culminate in a short film set to premiere in September of this year. Outside of their research, KC is a team member of the web collective degrowth.info and a member of a nascent housing cooperat...

“I guess the work that we're doing here at the Climate Hazards Center is trying to build out the science to cope with a two-degree world. And I think that we can do that. It's not going to be easy, but I think that's definitely within our capabilities, and it is already making human beings be smarter together in very empowering ways. And these are examples of people in Boulder, Colorado getting re...

Chris Funk is the Director of the Climate Hazards Center (CHC) at UC Santa Barbara. He works with an international team of Earth scientists to inform weather and famine-related disaster responses. Chris studies climate and climate change while also developing improved data sets and monitoring/prediction systems. He’s the author of Drought, Flood, Fire: How Climate Change Contributes to Recent Cata...

Yee Lee was the first employee at Terraformation, dedicated to restoring the planet’s forests to solve climate change. He is a serial technology entrepreneur and angel investor from Silicon Valley, having invested in over 100 technology startups. Prior to Terraformation, Yee was an early team member at PayPal and Slide. He founded four venture-backed ecommerce and financial technology startups wit...

“We're trying to help the world's forestry organizations collectively plant a trillion trees in the next decade and cover 3 billion acres of net new forest. That's a very, very large number. Some of the very largest tree-planting organizations in the world collectively plant something like half a billion to three-quarters of a billion trees per year. And even that number sounds large, too, but the...

"The great thing about a complex society is there is space for lots of different kinds of people. There's space for wildly visionary poets and accountants and actuaries and engineers. And they all have a slightly different outlook, but it's the combination of this huge diversity, which makes our societies work. But what we probably do need a bit more of are the bilingual people, the trilingual peo...

Sir Geoff Mulgan is Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London. Formerly he was chief executive of Nesta, and held government roles (1997–2004), including as the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit director and as Downing Street’s head of policy. He is the founder or co-founder of many organisations, from Demos to Action for Happiness, and the...