fiction

Enchanted Objects - how fiction foreshadows innovation

David Rose, who is a serial entrepreneur and a lecturer at MIT, shows how human beings have persistent needs and wishes that they carry through time. For each of these needs, he presents various prototypes and products to demonstrate how design can lead to "enchanted objects" by fulfilling them.

David Rose, who is a serial entrepreneur and a lecturer at MIT, shows how human beings have persistent needs and wishes that they carry through time. For each of these needs, he presents various prototypes and products to demonstrate how design can lead to "enchanted objects" by fulfilling them.

Patrick J. Gyger is a Swiss historian, curator and writer. In the 1990s he specialised in medieval studies. Since 1999, he has been the director of Maison d’Ailleurs (the “House of Elsewhere”), a Swiss museum.

With it’s over 60,000 books and thousands of pulp magazines it houses one of the world’s largest collections of literature on science fiction, utopia, and extraordinary journeys.

In 2008, Patrick opened the “Espace Jules Verne”, a wing of Maison d’Ailleurs dedicated to Jules Verne and extraordinary journeys. In the early 2000s, he was one of the co-managers of European Space Agency’s ITSF study – Innovative Technologies from Science Fiction for Space Applications – a research looking into Science Fiction to find ideas for space engineers. His most recent book is “Flying Cars or, Memories of a Dreamt Future”.

Patrick, together with Nicolas Nova, will kick off the conference on Thursday morning with his talk in the first “Change” session. We are very much looking forward to his talk on “Memoires of a magnificent future”. Find more info on Patrick on his LIFT profile.