The future of science from Sci Foo

3rd March 2011

| Kaitlin Thaney

Planning is now in full swing for this summer’s Science Foo Camp (“Sci Foo” for short), an unconference we co-organise each year with O’Reilly Media and Google. We’re pleased to share four new videos from last summer’s event, put together by our colleagues at Nature Video.

You may remember back in December us writing about the first of a series of videos, a short piece capturing the spirit of last year’s Sci Foo in the words of some of our participants including Andrew Marr, Aleks Krotoski and Marcus du Sautoy. The remaining videos in that series are now live on the Sci Foo site (and posted below), each posing a specific question to our Sci Foo friends on the future of science and the environment. We encourage you to give them a look. And many thanks again to Adam Rutherford and Charlotte Stoddard at Nature Video for their brilliant work.

On to the videos …

Part 1: What worries you?

We asked a skeptic, an internet guru, a philosopher and some scientists about their worries for the future.

Part 2: Imagining the future

Which technology will have the greatest impact in the next 10 years: the internet, genomics or geo-engineering? Are you optimistic about the future, or pessimistic? Find out how some of the sharpest thinkers imagine the world in the next decade and in 2050.

Part 3: Food & energy

How do we feed 9 billion people? How can we reduce our carbon dioxide emissions? Campers at the 2010 meeting came up with a variety of answers.