Future Day Melbourne 2019
Future Day is nigh – sporting a spectacular line of speakers!
Agenda
| 5.30 | Doors open – meet and greet other attendees |
| 5.45 | Introduction |
| 6.00 | Drew Berry – “The molecular machines that create your flesh and blood” [abstract] |
| 6.45 | Brock Bastian – “Happiness, culture, mental illness, and the future self” [abstract] |
| 7.30 | Lynette Plenderleith: “The future of biodiversity starts now” [abstract] |
| 8.15 | Panel: Drew Berry, Brock Bastian, Lynette Plenderleith |
Venue: KPMG Melbourne – 727 Collins St [map link] – Collins Square – Level 36 Room 2
PLEASE have a snack/drink before you come. Apparently we can’t supply food/drink at KPMG, so eat something beforehand – or work up and appetite…
Afterwards we will sojourn at a local pub for some grub and ale.
I’m looking forward to seeing people I have met before, and some new faces as well.
– Drew Berry – Biomedical Animator @ The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research –
– Brock Bastian – Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences University of Melbourne
Check out the Future Day Facebook Group, and the Twitter account!
Abstracts
The molecular machines that create your flesh and blood
By Drew Berry – Abstract: A profound technological revolution is underway in bio-medical science, accelerating development of new therapies and treatments for the diseases that afflict us and also transforming how we perceive ourselves and the nature of our living bodies. Coupled to the accelerating pace of scientific discovery is an ever expanding need to explain to the public and develop appreciation of our new biomedical capabilities, to prepare the public for the tsunami of new knowledge and medicines that will impact patients, our families and community.
Drew Berry will present the latest visualisation experiments in creating cinematic movies and real-time interactive 3D molecular worlds, that reveal the current state of the art scientific discovery, focusing on the molecular engines that covert the food you eat into the chemical energy that powers your cells and tissues. Leveraging the incredible power of game GPU technology, vast molecular landscapes can be generated for 3D 360 degree cinema for museum and science centre dome theatres, interactive exploration in VR, and Augmented Reality education via student mobile phones.
Happiness, culture, mental illness, and the future self
By Brock Bastian – Abstract: What is the future of human happiness and wellbeing. We are currently treating mental illness at the level of individuals, yet rates of mental illness are not going down, and in some cases continue to rise. I will present research indicating that we need to start to tackle this problem at the level of culture. The cultural values places on particular emotional states may play a role in how people respond to their own emotional worlds. Furthermore, I will present evidence that basic cultural differences in how we explain events, predict the future and understand ourselves may also impact on the effectiveness of our capacity to deal with emotional events. This suggests that we need to begin to take culture seriously in how we treat mental illness. It also provides some important insights into what kind of thinking styles we might seek to promote and how we might seek to understand and shape our future selves. This also has implications for how we might find happiness in a world increasingly characterized by residential mobility, weak ties, and digital rather than face-to-face interaction.
The future of biodiversity starts now
By Lynette Plenderleith – Abstract: Biodiversity is vital to our food security, our industries, our health and our progress. Yet never before has the future of biodiversity been so under threat as we modify more land, burn more fossil fuels and transport exotic organisms around the planet. But in the face of catastrophic biodiversity collapse, scientists, community groups and not-for-profits are working to discover new ways to conserve biodiversity, for us and the rest of life on our planet. From techniques as simple as preserving habitat to complex scientific techniques like de-extinction, Lynette will discuss our options for the future to protect biodiversity, how the future of biodiversity could look and why we should start employing conservation techniques now. Our future relies on the conservation of biodiversity and its future rests in our hands. We have the technology to protect it.
Biographies
Dr Drew Berry
Dr Drew Berry is a biomedical animator who creates beautiful, accurate visualisations of the dramatic cellular and molecular action that is going on inside our bodies. He began his career as a cell biologist and is fluent navigating technical reports, research data and models from scientific journals. As an artist, he works as a translator, transforming abstract and complicated scientific concepts into vivid and meaningful visual journeys. Since 1995 he has been a biomedical animator at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Australia. His animations have exhibited at venues such as the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, the Royal Institute of Great Britain and the University of Geneva. In 2010, he received a MacArthur Fellowship “Genius Grant”.
Recognition and awards
• Doctorate of Technology (hc), Linköping University Sweden, 2016
• MacArthur Fellowship, USA 2010
• New York Times “If there is a Steven Spielberg of molecular animation, it is probably Drew Berry” 2010
• The New Yorker “[Drew Berry’s] animations are astonishingly beautiful” 2008
• American Scientist “The admirers of Drew Berry, at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Australia, talk about him the way Cellini talked about Michelangelo” 2009
• Nature Niche Prize, UK 2008
• Emmy “DNA” Windfall Films, UK 2005
• BAFTA “DNA Interactive” RGB Co, UK 2004
Animation http://www.wehi.tv
TED http://www.ted.com/talks/
Architectural projection https
Björk video https://www.youtube.com/
Wikipedia https://en.
Assoc Prof Brock Bastian
Brock Bastian is a social psychologist whose research focuses on pain, happiness, and morality.
In his search for a new perspective on what makes for the good life, Brock Bastian has studied why promoting happiness may have paradoxical effects; why we need negative and painful experiences in life to build meaning, purpose, resilience, and ultimately greater fulfilment in life; and why behavioural ethics is necessary for understanding how we reason about personal and social issues and resolve conflicts of interest. His first book, The Other Side of Happiness, was published in January 2018.
The Other Side of Happiness: Embracing a More Fearless Approach to Living
Our addiction to positivity and the pursuit of pleasure is actually making us miserable. Brock Bastian shows that, without some pain, we have no real way to achieve and appreciate the kind of happiness that is true and transcendent.
Read more about The Other Side of Happiness →
Dr. Lynette Plenderleith
Dr. Lynette Plenderleith is a wildlife biologist by training and is now a media science specialist, working mostly in television, with credits including children’s show WAC!
World Animal Championships and Gardening Australia. Lynette is Chair and Founder of Frogs Victoria, President of the Victorian branch of Australian Science Communicators and occasional performer of live science-comedy. Lynette has a Ph.D from Monash University, where she studied the ecology of native Australian frogs, a Master’s degree in the spatial ecology of salamanders from Towson University in the US and a BSc in Natural Sciences from Lancaster University in her homeland – the UK.
Twitter: @lynplen
Website: lynplen.com
The Future is not a product
It’s more exciting than gadgets with shiny screens and blinking lights.
Future Day is a way of focusing and celebrating the energy that more and more people around the world are directing toward creating a radically better future.
How should Future Day be celebrated? That is for us to decide as the future unfolds!
- Future Day could be adopted as an official holiday by countries around the world.
- Children can do Future Day projects at school, exploring their ideas and passions about creating a better future.
- Future Day costume parties — why not? It makes at least as much sense as dressing up to celebrate halloween!
- Businesses giving employees a day off from routine concerns, to think creatively about future projects
- Special Future Day issues in newspapers, magazines and blogs
- Use your imagination — that’s what the future is all about!
The Future & You
It’s time to create the future together!
Our aspirations are all too often sidetracked in this age of distraction. Lurking behind every unfolding minute is a random tangent with no real benefit for our future selves – so let’s ritualize our commitment to the future by celebrating it! Future Day is here to fill our attention economies with useful ways to solve the problems of arriving at desirable futures, & avoid being distracted by the usual gauntlet of noise we run every other day. Our future is very important – accelerating scientific & technological progress will change the world even more than it already has. While other days of celebration focus on the past – let’s face the future – an editable history of a time to come – a future that is glorious for everyone.
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