Support the 
Future of Imagination
The future is coming at us faster than ever, and knowing how to shape it might be one of the most important skills of the 21st century and beyond. The power of the imagination is that it allows us to envision both the near and long-term future and enables us, to paraphrase the words of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, to venture beyond the limits of the possible into the impossible. 
At the Clarke Center, we're changing the world from UC San Diego by conducting research and organizing programs around two primary goals: 
1) to conduct research on the phenomenon of the imagination, at the neurological, cognitive, and social levels, and 
2) to advance understanding of speculative culture as a means for shaping the cultural imagination and enabling social change.
This  #GivingTuesday , we encourage you to reflect on the ways in which human imagination has enabled so many of the profound, meaningful, and beneficial advances humankind has developed--and to consider how new methods of catalyzing imagination are needed to guide us through the at-times bewildering and disheartening present, toward a future we can look forward to.

Here are just a few of the projects currently underway at the Clarke Center:
Exhibition: Life: The Past, Present, and Future of an Unlikely Phenomenon
As we now discover that the universe is filled with billions of planets and our technologies of genetics, chemistry, and computation are able to create new phenomena that exhibit qualities of living things, our understanding of what "life" itself is requires us to stretch our imaginations to consider this most basic condition. Yet here we are in the 21st century, and most of us would struggle to explain what we mean by such a common, everyday term as the word "life." This museum exhibition, currently in development, brings together artists and the scientists behind the research radically redefining our understanding of life to invite visitors to viscerally engage with difficult-to-imagine ideas, forming their own personal, scientifically enriched sense of what it is "to be alive."

Fundamental Research on   Consciousness,   Imagination, and Awareness (CIA)
What we call our "self," which we conceive of as separate from the rest of the world, is our awareness of being aware--our ability to interrogate what we perceive, remember things we've experienced or learned, anticipate events to come, and imagine alternate possibilities. Our ongoing research on on the neurological basis for these cognitive feats enables us to examine how such a complex phenomenon as a "self" emerges from these basic conditions within the brain, and how emerging technologies can augment and extend its unique capacities.
Mixed Reality and Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness
With wearable biometric sensors and real-time documentation, we are gaining new insights into how cultural practices--from arts and music to religious ritual, peak experiences, and psychedelic-assisted therapies--cultivate non-ordinary states of consciousness that modulate our brains and nervous system, and shape our experience of self and the world. Our goals are to 1) quantify characteristics of non-ordinary states that have shown a potential for therapeutic impact and their biopsychosocial and aesthetic foundations, and 2) develop technologies that can functionalize these states in advantageous ways for psychological health (particularly for depression, anxiety, PTSD, addition, and chronic pain, among others) as well as cultural well-being.

Quantum Computing for Neuroscience
 
For a generation, the standard computer has been used as an analogy for the human brain--a two way metaphor that has advanced computer science into the age of machines capable of artificial intelligence and has proved exceptionally useful in quantifying aspects of cognitive and psychological functions as related to circuits of neurons in the "computer" of the brain.  The advent of functioning quantum computers allows for a new analogy between mind and machine, and for us to put that question more powerfully to the test. Quantum computers operate in a completely different way that standard computers, and the kinds of optimization problems they are designed to solve are potentially exemplary for many issues in brain action, such as object recognition, motor control, and a combination of other disparate variables in things like the phenomenon of imagination.
 
AI, Contextual Presence, and the Future of Medicine

We are expanding the boundaries for how distributed artificial intelligence, conversational agents, edge computing, spatial mapping, and the internet of things can be coordinated into holistic systems to support medical patients and medical practitioners through Contextual Presence,
an integrative approach that augments self-care by patients and more efficiently leverages caregiver labor. This assistive Contextual Presence approach leverages scarce resources and, through their integration into a contextually aware scheme blending adaptive virtual representations and physical presence, can for example extend independence and support cognitive functioning for an aging population in an eldercare use case.

The Long Tail of Science Fiction


This project aims to develop an expert system supporting new and richer interpretations of the role that popular culture and the genre of science fiction in particular had in mediating public understandings of science--allowing researchers and the public to cross-reference the mutual influence between scientific advancement and science fiction over the last 150 years. By introducing digital library and scholarly publication services into scientific computing infrastructures, otherwise designed for experimental "big" data, we will provide new ways of discovering, accessing, visualizing, and re-using "long-tail" data for scientists, humanities scholars, and the general public. Partners include the University of Liverpool, UCSD Library, UCR Eaton Collection, JSTOR, HATHII, Internet Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, among others.
Augmenting Our Understanding of Biodiversity
Founded in collaboration between artists and scientists, this project leverages arts-based approaches to emerging technologies like augmented reality and virtual realty to develop museum visitors' intuitive knowledge, appreciation, and awareness of the local biosphere--to illuminate the invisible (to typical human perception) layers of interdependence, interaction, and communication between plant and animal life, geology, and the human presence/built environment. By bringing visitors into an experience, a story that involves their bodies and senses to allow them to feel what it would be like to sense the Earth's magnetic field and navigate by it like a bird, see the pheromone trails ants guide each other by, unveil the chemical signs trees emit to communicate with one another, or "hear" the world as a bat does by echolocation, a more intimate relationship is developed between communities of human beings and their often-imperiled animal and plant neighbors and environments.
San Diego 2049
With the School of Global Policy and Strategy, we have been collaborating this year to produce San Diego 2049, a series of programs that uses the imagination and narrative tools of science fiction to stimulate complex thinking about the future and the ways we could shape it through policy, technology, innovation, culture, and social change. Graduate student teams have an opportunity to compete with final projects and earn a Certificate in Speculative Design for Policy Making from GPS. Visiting experts include Vernor Vinge, Ann Pendleton-Jullian, Teddy Cruz, Fonna Forman, Deborah Forster, Tananarive Due, Rose Eveleth, David Brin, Glen Weyl, Annalee Newitz, and Kim Stanley Robinson.
Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop
Clarion is an intensive six-week summer program focused on fundamentals particular to the writing of science fiction and fantasy short stories--the oldest and most prestigious of its kind. It is considered a premier proving and training ground for aspiring writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Instructors are among the most respected writers and editors working in the field today. Over one third of our graduates have been published and many have gone on to critical acclaim. The list of  distinguished Clarion alumni includes Ed Bryant, Octavia Butler, Bob Crais, Cory Doctorow, George Alec Effinger, Nalo Hopkinson, James Patrick Kelly, Vonda McIntyre, Kim Stanley Robinson, Martha Soukup, Kelly Link, Bruce Sterling, Carmen Maria Machado, and many others.
Imagination Speakers Series

Through our ongoing series of public events with visionaries in the arts, sciences, and humanities who exemplify the power of the imagination, we have brought luminaries like Cixin Liu, Sir Roger Penrose, Karen Joy Fowler, Ted Chiang, Freeman Dyson, George R.R. Martin, and more to UC San Diego. This next year, guests include Annalee Newitz (author,
Autonomous) and Kim Stanley Robinson (UCSD alumnus and author of, most recently, Red Moon).

If you're inspired by this mission we're on, remember the Clarke Center on  #GivingTuesday and support our inspiring teams of faculty, researchers, graduate students, undergraduates, and partners.

With much gratitude, 
From all of us at the Clarke Center

How to Support the Clarke Center:


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Please call Gift Processing at  (858) 534-4493 and specify your gift to " Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination (2271)"

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Print this gift form, make your check payable to "UC San Diego Foundation," note: " Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination (2271)" and mail it with your payment to:
UCSD Gift Processing 
9500 Gilman Dr., #0940 
La Jolla, CA 92093-0940
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