Montreal Space Symposium 2019

Media can be an ally if you take the time to understand how they do business and what motivates them. As an entrepreneur who has started several for profit and non-profit organizations, I've had to learn on the fly. In this talk I'll share some of what I've learned.

The Voyager Golden Records, the Juno spacecraft, data from radio telescopes, and the ISS; all examples of how humans interact with space. Though typically considered through practical lenses, a cultural lens should also be applied. Such an application demands that human interaction with space be considered in many ways as art in itself. Human-space interaction reflects back on society in many ways: pop culture, space inventions adapted for grounded life, how we look at national borders, in how we see commercial and government enterprises, in what we think is plausible in our lifetimes. The motivation of space activities is another element of cultural significance. For example, the reason why North Americans are racing to send humans to Mars now is far removed from the reasons they sent humans to the moon during the 1960s and 70s. What kind of differing and converging ideas could there be behind the Voyager Golden Records and the spacebound Tesla Roadster? And what do those ideas reveal about us as a culture? When it comes to cultural studies, there are always more questions than answers. Offering new perspectives on how to ask and those questions, and how to attempt to answer them, will hopefully inspire others to do the same.