The Participants Bran Ferren, moderator, is president of R & D and the Creative Technology Group at Walt Disney Imagineering, which melds science, engineering, art, and design in virtual reality attractions and interactive television. Ferren's work has also been seen on stage (Evita, Cats) and in films (Little Shop of Horrors, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier).
Marvin Minsky, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, is often called the father of artificial intelligence. His provocative book The Society of Mind offers a constructive explanation of thought and action, leading one reader to laud Minsky as "the Bob Vila of consciousness."
Dean Kamen, president and owner of DEKA Research & Development Corporation, is a physicist and inventor. He holds more than 100 patents, many of them for critical medical devices such as the portable dialysis machine and arterial stents, and a radical new wheelchair that offers dramatically increased mobility.
Story Musgrave has logged more than 1,200 hours in orbit during his three decades as a NASA astronaut-scientist. His most notable assignment: making key repairs on the Hubble telescope. Musgrave is also an artist, mathematician, photographer, physician, physicist, and poet.
Joy Mountford has spent most of her career exploring the idea that there is an art, not just a science, to the relationship between people and machines. Formerly head of Apple Computer's Human Interface Group, she now leads consumer music development projects at Palo Alto's Interval Research Corporation.
