Imagined Futures w/ Neal Stephenson, Ken Liu & more
Join SPC for a conversation about how the future unfolds from the feedback loop between the people who imagine it and the people who build it.
Featuring:
Panelists: Neal Stephenson, Ken Liu, Cyan Banister, Joscha Bach
Moderators: Jonathan Brebner & Cristian Cibils Bernardes
Event Details
4:30pm: Doors open
5:00-6:30pm: Panel discussion
Neal Stephenson
Neal Stephenson is an American science fiction author known for his intricate, genre-blending novels that explore technology, history, and society. He gained prominence with Snow Crash (1992), a cyberpunk classic that predicted the rise of virtual reality. His works, including Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle, and Seveneves, blend speculative fiction with deep technical and philosophical themes. Stephenson has also contributed to futurism and tech projects, influencing real-world discussions on blockchain, AI, and space exploration.
Ken Liu
Ken Liu is an American author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he wrote the Dandelion Dynasty, a silkpunk epic fantasy series (starting with The Grace of Kings), as well as short story collections The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. He also penned the Star Wars novel The Legends of Luke Skywalker.
Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Liu worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. Liu frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, machine-augmented creativity, history of technology, bookmaking, and the mathematics of origami.
Cyan Banister
Cyan Banister is addicted to early-stage angel investing and is now a General Partner at a venture capital firm called Long Journey Ventures. She spends much time dreaming about what the future could look like and investing in magically weird people who do the same but are creating it. Most recently, she was at Founders Fund, a top-tier fund in San Francisco, CA. Her most successful investments have a common theme around job creation and flexibility, but she has invested in everything from rocket ships to sandwich delivery.
Joscha Bach
Joscha Bach is a cognitive scientist who uses the paradigms of Artificial Intelligence as a framework to understand mind, intelligence and consciousness. Joscha's interests include cognitive architectures, mental representation, artificial emotion and motivation, and philosophy of AI. He earned a Ph.D. in cognitive science from the University of Osnabrück, Germany and worked as an AI researcher at the Humboldt-University of Berlin, the MIT Media Lab, the Harvard Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, and Intel Labs. He currently advises the startup LiquidAI, and builds the California Institute for Machine Consciousness.
Registration and approval is required and space is limited, so please RSVP soon. Priority is given to SPC members, alumni and incoming Founder Fellows.