W. Patrick McCray
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780691176291
- eISBN:
- 9781400844685
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691176291.003.0009
- Subject:
- Physics, History of Physics
This chapter argues that regardless of the reasons that compelled them, people such as Drexler and O'Neill, by combining their broad views of the future with technical skills, experience, and ...
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This chapter argues that regardless of the reasons that compelled them, people such as Drexler and O'Neill, by combining their broad views of the future with technical skills, experience, and research, took speculative ideas out of the hands of sci-fi writers and technological forecasters and put them on firmer ground. Although visioneers' ideas may sit outside the mainstream and require considerable work to establish their legitimacy, their work toward that end secures a beachhead where exploratory notions can exist while entrepreneurial scientists and engineers mobilize and push things one way or the other. By inspiring (or provoking) people, visioneering helps reveal the future as something other than some neutral space that people move into without friction. Instead, it is a terrain made rough by politics, ethics, and economics as well as people's hopes and anxieties.Less
This chapter argues that regardless of the reasons that compelled them, people such as Drexler and O'Neill, by combining their broad views of the future with technical skills, experience, and research, took speculative ideas out of the hands of sci-fi writers and technological forecasters and put them on firmer ground. Although visioneers' ideas may sit outside the mainstream and require considerable work to establish their legitimacy, their work toward that end secures a beachhead where exploratory notions can exist while entrepreneurial scientists and engineers mobilize and push things one way or the other. By inspiring (or provoking) people, visioneering helps reveal the future as something other than some neutral space that people move into without friction. Instead, it is a terrain made rough by politics, ethics, and economics as well as people's hopes and anxieties.
Henry Trim
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226372884
- eISBN:
- 9780226373072
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226373072.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter examines the visioneering of John Todd and the New Alchemy Institute. In the 1970s this group of counterculture scientists and back to the land advocates founded their own scientific ...
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This chapter examines the visioneering of John Todd and the New Alchemy Institute. In the 1970s this group of counterculture scientists and back to the land advocates founded their own scientific institute on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Merging scientific research with a compelling vision of a sustainable “space ship earth,” the Institute straddled the supposed boundary between NASA research and countercultural rebellion. Guided by their charismatic leader, Dr John Todd, the New Alchemists deftly drew financial and political support from the Canadian government and prestigious institutions while working closely with Stewart Brand and the appropriate technologists associated with the Whole Earth Catalog. The group used this support to build its iconic Arks and to pioneer green architecture and aquaponics on Cape Cod and Prince Edward Island. The work of Todd and his New Alchemists highlights the intimate relationship between advanced techno-science, countercultural visions of social transformation, and activist state which made the dizzying experimentation of the long 1970s possible.Less
This chapter examines the visioneering of John Todd and the New Alchemy Institute. In the 1970s this group of counterculture scientists and back to the land advocates founded their own scientific institute on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Merging scientific research with a compelling vision of a sustainable “space ship earth,” the Institute straddled the supposed boundary between NASA research and countercultural rebellion. Guided by their charismatic leader, Dr John Todd, the New Alchemists deftly drew financial and political support from the Canadian government and prestigious institutions while working closely with Stewart Brand and the appropriate technologists associated with the Whole Earth Catalog. The group used this support to build its iconic Arks and to pioneer green architecture and aquaponics on Cape Cod and Prince Edward Island. The work of Todd and his New Alchemists highlights the intimate relationship between advanced techno-science, countercultural visions of social transformation, and activist state which made the dizzying experimentation of the long 1970s possible.
