Foresight Institute
10th Anniversary 1986-1996
What People are Saying
A 10th
anniversary celebration was held in Palo Alto on October 19,
1996,
to commemorate the publication of Engines
of Creation and the founding of the Foresight
Institute in 1986.
Dr. Stanley Schmidt
"Engines of Creation is one of the most
important books in recent memory, and the Foresight Institute
the best tool we have for using its ideas wisely."
Dr. Stanley Schmidt, Editor of Analog
Science Fiction and Science Fact
magazine.
John Kao
"Nanotechnology is a promissory note on the future.
As a discipline, it provokes our creativity in uniquely
interdisciplinary ways. It asks us to imagine, to dream, and
to dare."
John Kao, author of Jamming - The Art and
Discipline of Business Creativity,
and Academic Director, Managing Innovation Program, Stanford
University.
Peter Schwartz
"The Foresight Institute is nurturing the birth of a
revolution that if successful will lead to many of
humankind's most profound dilemmas like poverty,
environmental destruction and resource depletion becoming
only memories of a distant past."
Peter Schwartz, Global Business Network
Don Lavoie
"Now that the natural scientists are taking this book
seriously, it is high time that social scientists start to do
so. The socio-economic and political changes that the
nanotechnological revolution will usher in are difficult to
imagine, but I think we had better start doing some serious
thinking about them."
Don Lavoie, David H. and Charles G. Koch Professor of
Economics Program on Social & Organization Learning,
George Mason University.
Andy Hertzfeld
"Engines of Creation is one of the most
exciting books that I've ever read. It describes the
remarkable yet inevitable consequences of nanotechnology in a
simple, clear and completely believable fashion."
Andy Hertzfeld, Macintosh designer and co-founder of
General Magic.
Prof. Bart Kosko
"The frontier of nanotechnology moves closer each day
as computer chips grow more dense with circuits and as fields
like laser chemistry and polymer engineering grow from
research oddities to a new source of patents and products.
History will record that the vision of the nano-frontier
began with Engines of Creation."
Prof. Bart Kosko, Director Signal and Image Processing
Institute, Electrical Engineering Dept., USC, author of Fuzzy
Thinking.
Vernor Vinge
"It's not often that the walls of the everyday are
turned to windows, and one sees vistas of possibility that
were previously unimagined; reading Engines of Creation
was such an experience for me."
Vernor Vinge, Assoc. Prof. of Mathematical Sciences, San
Diego State University.
William McDonough
"As designers and 'makers of things' we, de facto,
must find ethical ways to work at the level of molecules and
regions. The Foresight Institute reminds us our handprints
are as infinitesimal as our footprints are immense."
William McDonough, Dean, School of Architecture, Elson
Prof. of Arch., Founder, Institute for Sustainable Design, U.
Of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, McDonough Braungart Design
Chemistry.
John Gilmore
"Foresight has been quite successful in promoting the
concept of nanotechnology and in making it a serious area of
scientific research. Its real work is yet to come, as it
leads the public in grappling with the huge social
transformations that nanotechnology will impose upon every
living human being."
John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, the Cypherpunks, the "alt" Usenet
newsgroups, ISP "The Little Garden", and Cygnus
Support (now Cygnus Solutions).
John Seely Brown
"Mind stretching!"
John Seely Brown, Chief Scientist, Xerox Corporation
David Brin, Ph.D
"Nanotechnology has replaced space flight and virtual
reality as the most eagerly discussed topic in speculative
novels about the future. Some of the very brightest, most
knowledgeable authors are busy penning extrapolations based
on possible good and bad effects, when micro-machinery takes
its place in our suite of potent tools. Will we use it
wisely? The answer may depend on how well we think out things
in advance. Engines of Creation pointed the way for
this wave of foresight. If we use nanotech right, it will be
partly in thanks to this book."
David Brin, Ph.D, best-selling author of EARTH
and the Transparent Society.
Sister Mercedes
"The future nanotechnology revolution is apt to catch
most of us unawares. I look to the Foresight Institute to
prepare the world for the unprecedented changes to come and
the wisdom to deal with them.
In the Foresight Institute we as a nation have the beginnings
of a collective conscience which will enable us to make moral
and prudent decisions regarding the new technology which is
fast coming into being."
Sister Mercedes, Carmelite Monastery, Carmel CA.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds
"Engines of Creation is that rarest of things,
a technically sophisticated book that is still accessible to
general readers. The Foresight Institute is distinguished
from most other technology-related think tanks by its taking
seriously - before the fact - the ethical and social
ramifications of new technology."
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Professor of Law, University of
Tennessee.
Robert W. Poole, Jr.
"Thanks to the pioneering work of the Foresight
Institute, real progress is being made in nanotechnology,
with tremendous promise for improving our lives in the 21st
century."
Robert W. Poole, Jr., President, Reason Foundation
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