Genetically engineered athletes, robot universities, academics not competing, peacocks advertising, visions of the poet William Blake and the University of Utopia are some of the crazy ideas floating around in a congress keynote talk from the far future of 2048 — looking back on the year 2028. The video of the talk has been long-lost in time travel, but now recently refound and made available here.

Confused? Here is more to puzzle over:

This is Thomas Moore – statesman and thinker – around year 1500 he coined the word “utopia” – the place that is not – to be able to publish in 1516 a social vision for  better society without having his head cut off. (He did end up having his head cut off, but for other reasons.) His ideas eventually led to the origin of the University of Utopia in 2028. The talk explains how.

A video of the talk from 2048 appeared together with this message:

The organizers of EUNIS 2048 has asked me to look back on those good old days when we humans were still smarter than our creations and the human individual was considered the seat of the mind. But please do remember: 2028 was not at all a year of festivities. It was the time when it suddenly and dramatically dawned on humans what robot scientists had been talking about for three decades: 2028 was to become the last year before that phase transition where the sudden superiority of artificial information processing led to the merging of all individual human minds into one universal mind. The disappearance of the ego was a consequence of the many changes in the organization of human knowledge that happened in the years up to 2028: The merging of all texts into one searchable unit, the linking of all learned and educational institutions into one grand networked lecture bazaar, the appearance of instant translation between disciplines of knowledge and the acknowledgement of the complexity of everyday knowledge as compared to the abstract, formal knowledge of the old scientific disciplines. But perhaps most of all the appearance of art as the prime engine of knowledge and the flow of relationships in networks as the prime mover of the mind was the forerunner of that great achievement of 2028 for which we are still thankful: The University of Utopia. And for its wonderfully deep slogan: All humans are students, all students are teachers, no teacher is human anymore.

It turns out that this talk was in fact not held in 2048, but in 2008.

“Looking back on 2028” is kind of weird title for a lecture held in year 2008. But the lecture pretends to be held in 2048 and to be looking back on 2028. It can therefore deal with a lot of wild statements as a kind of science fiction story. Thus it is about robots, olympics, universities based on collaboration and other utopian stuff.

The occasion was the 14th  EUNIS congress held in Aarhus, June 24-27 2008. EUNIS is an organisation that brings together people responsible for information technology in european universities. The organizers wanted something far out as an opening keynote, so they asked for at forecast for 2028. My response was to double the challenge by choosing to do a look-back at 2028 from the point-of-view of 2048. So impossible perhaps, that one is forgiven for saying silly things. Oddly enough, this statement from the future was lost again. The video of the talk was on the net after the event, but has been unavailable for years. But then in the fall of 2012 it became available again  on Vimeo.  So here it is in 2012 – with apologies for the sound being slightly out of synch … asynchronous like the entire talk:

Looking back at 2028 from Science Media Lab on Vimeo.

 The video ended in a strange way? At the actual event, when the talk was given in 2008, I stepped down from the stage and then played the Beatles-song “Because” (originally from the Abbey Road album). However, copyright issues made it impossible to include the soundtrack of the song in the video. Only the lyrics were allowed for.

You can listen to a sample from the original version of the song here.

Abbey Road, 1969

In fact, the version played at the talk was the remastered one from the Beatles album “Love” produced for the Cirque de Soleil show of that title.

   Love, 2006 

The slides from the talk are here:   EUNIS 2048 UoU q

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Me, 2048