Fish Out of Water investigates what new ideas and challenges would surface if experts in particular fields were challenged to think deeply about topics outside of their areas of expertise, and to engage in activities outside of their comfort zones.

By Chelsey Ballarte, State Press

A young heroine must fight not only her nemesis, but the doubts from the very city she tries to save.

By Eileen Gunn, Smithsonian Magazine

To the Best of Our Knowledge, Wisconsin Public Radio / Public Radio International

This article originally appeared on ASU News Ed Finn, director of ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination, and an assistant professor in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering and

In this episode, we talk with interspecies jazz musician and philosopher David Rothenberg. David appeared at Arizona State University’s Emerge: Carnival of the Future on March 7, 2014 to perform alongside flying quadcopters and the band There Is Danger. Click here to watch a clip of the performance, titled “Drone Confidential,” and visit Slate’s Future Tense channel to read an article about the process of creating the performance. Check out this transcript of the interview, or watch the video below! https://vimeo.com/91355576

This post is part of CSI’s Thoughtful Optimism and Science Fiction project. To learn more about the project, visit https://csi.asu.edu/category/optimism/. Listening to my co-readers react to the stories in Cory Doctorow’s

Time-traveling, a fantasy carnival and superhero fiction. We read a trio of Cory Doctorow short stories from the collection A Place So Foreign and Eight More (2003) – “A Place So Foreign,” “Return to Pleasure Island,” and “The Super Man and the Bugout” – and noticed a common trend between these radically different stories.

The Arizona Computer-Assisted Language Learning Conference unites language learning experts throughout the southwestern U.S. to discuss new ideas, share research outcomes, brainstorm and network. We interviewed a few participants in the 2014 conference to get their ideas on how different factors like technology, translation, storytelling and culture shape language learning.

The Arizona Computer-Assisted Language Learning Conference unites language learning experts throughout the southwestern U.S. to discuss new ideas, share research outcomes, brainstorm and network. We interviewed a few participants in the 2014 conference to get their ideas on how different factors like technology, translation, storytelling and culture shape language learning.

In this episode of 5 Burning Questions, we talk with CSI Imaginary College Fellow Daniel Fine, the Principal Investigator for the Wonder Dome project.

In his 1984 film The Terminator and its sequels, James Cameron imagines a dystopic future in which armies of intelligent robots move with startling suddenness from positions of servility to utter and violent dominance, destroying civilization and driving humankind to the brink of extinction.

This, of course, is pure science fiction. There’s little reason to believe things will unfold that way. First, they would take all our jobs and wreck our economy.

This is the nightmare narrative of our future with robots and artificial intelligence. The utopian version of this tale—one accepted by many powerful people in industry and government—involves a …read more

In this episode, we talk with Doug Wolens, a documentary filmmaker best known for his films The Singularity and Butterfly.

This item was originally published by ASU News. Three Arizona State University researchers have received a grant from the National Science Foundation to lead a workshop to build a global,

A voice cries out in the desert:

“Know thyself, not thy selfies!”

“Digital media will not save you!”

“The zero is not whole and the one is not The One!”

Technically, we’re not in the desert—we’re in a dusty parking lot in downtown Phoenix. And the voice is not coming from the Prophet Isaiah, but from professor Ron Broglio, whom I’ve ordained as a Minister of the Digital Tabernacle. As people wander into the massive circus tent at Arizona State University’s Emerge: Carnival of the Future, they are greeted by a pair of shifty evangelists preaching the analog Word. (Disclosure: …read more

The good thing about performing music with drones is that they always show up for rehearsal on time. The bad thing is that they might suddenly drop out of the air and onto your head.

I learned all this while putting together a piece called “Drone Confidential” for Arizona State University’s Emerge, a “Carnival of the Future” that was held in Phoenix recently. Emerge is an annual circus of cool new technologies in performance, dedicated to showing how artists and machines can work together to create something awesome. …read more

Wonder Dome, a new experiment in performance platforms directed by CSI’s Imaginary College Fellow Daniel Fine, will be premiering at Mesa Arts Center in the show “Oh, No! Not That Story!”

Space exploration has always been driven by both the imagination of the individual and the political will of nations. When the United States decided to go to the Moon it was an inherently political endeavor, part of the Cold War arms race; however, the majesty of the journey itself inspired the imaginations of millions of people to dream of traveling far beyond the Moon.

Near-future science fiction is notorious for its inaccurate predictions – from Blade Runner’s Replicants to the Back to the Future hover boards that people sarcastically mention at New Year’s parties. However, Kim Stanley Robinson’s dark political adventure Red Mars (1993) is spot-on with its predictions about virtual reality.