Society: Dealing With Rapid Change

Rudy Rucker is a writer, a mathematician, and a computer scientist-—with thirty-two published books. In the 1980s he received Philip K. Dick awards for his cyberpunk novels Software and Wetware. He was a computer science professor for twenty years in Silicon Valley. He is known for his popular science books (on infinity, the fourth dimension, and the meaning of computation), as well as for his novels. He was a founder of the cyberpunk school of SF writing, and also works in the transreal style. Read more »

Mike Treder, executive director of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN), is a professional writer, speaker, and policy advocate with a background in technology and communications company management. After attending the University of Washington in Seattle, with a major in Biology, Mike’s career in the private sector included stints as manager of radio stations in major markets, and with a large telecommunications firm. Read more »

Benjamin Rosenbaum’s short fiction ranges from crisply extrapolative science fiction in the Campbellian tradition, to richly ambiguous fantasy, to Borgesian fables and postmodern literary whimsies -- accordingly, it’s been published in venues ranging from Asimov’s and F&SF to Nature to Harper’s and McSweeney’s. Ben has been a finalist for the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Sturgeon Awards, and his stories have been collected in The Year’s Best Science Fiction, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Best SF, and the seminal slipstream anthology “Feeling Very Strange”. Read more »

Author EDWARD M. LERNER has degrees in physics, computer science, and business. Before turning in 2004 to full-time writing, he spent thirty years in high tech at every level from engineer to senior vice president. He's worked at such techie havens as Bell Labs, Hughes Aircraft, and Northrop Grumman -- and at a long-gone start-up of which you've almost certainly never heard. He delivered high-tech products and systems to government agencies (including NASA, the FBI, and the Defense Department) and commercial customers as varied as AT&T and McDonalds. Read more »