A COSM 2021 speaker that tech watchers won’t want to miss is CalTech’s Carver Mead (1934–), best known in computer history for pioneering the automation, methodology and teaching of the integrated circuit design used in microprocessors and memories.

According to the Lemelson–MIT Student Prize program, “Carver Mead has made many of the Information Age’s most significant advances in microcircuitry, which are essential to the internet access and global cellular phone use that many people enjoy and take for granted every day.”

Mead is also honored as a teacher. Forty years at CalTech, he advised the first female electrical engineering student there, Louise Kirkbride, who went on to become a tech developer and inventor in her own right. He has helped found more than twenty companies and he authored a classic textbook, Introduction to VLSI Systems (1980), co-authored with Lynn Conway, and Collective Electrodynamics (2000).

He also thinks deeply about physics: In 2001, he told The American Spectator,

The quantum world is a world of waves, not particles. So we have to think of electron waves and proton waves and so on. Matter is “incoherent” when all its waves have a different wavelength, implying a different momentum. On the other hand, if you take a pure quantum system–the electrons in a superconducting magnet, or the atoms in a laser–they are all in phase with one another, and they demonstrate the wave nature of matter on a large scale. Then you can see quite visibly what matter is down at its heart.

“Carver Mead: The Spectator Interview” at American Spectator Sep/Oct2001, Vol. 34 Issue 7, p68

Most recently, he has called for the reconceptualization of modern physics, revisiting the theoretical debates of Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein and others in light of later experiments and developments in instrumentation.

Note: If you fear high tech debates, stay away from COSM 2021. It will be held in person. You will interact with real movers and shakers. On the other hand, you won’t want to miss tech philosopher George Gilder’s debate with historian Niall Ferguson on whether High Tech is Big Time Doom. You can still get the just-in-time rate for the conference.

Here are a few other COSM speakers you won’t want to miss:

Jules Urbach, founder of OTOY, to speak at COSM 2021. Tech philosopher George Gilder has called him “ingenious” and ”the most inventive software engineer” he has ever met. “Every single person should have agency to create,” says Urbach, “and…if we do our jobs right, everyone with an idea is going to be able to render things.”

Note: If you fear lively high tech debates, stay away from COSM 2021. The meet will be held in person. You will interact with the real movers and shakers. At COSM 2021, tech philosopher George Gilder will debate historian Niall Ferguson on whether High Tech is Big Time Doom. On the other hand, you can still get in at the just-in-time rate for the conference.

Here are a few COSM speakers you won’t want to miss:

Peter Thiel Speaking in Person at COSM, Seattle, November 10. As a world class venture capitalist, he is known for bluntness about what works and what doesn’t. COSM 2021 focuses on the converging technologies, remaking our world. Thiel asks, is new tech soaring or slumping?

Babak Parviz, Inventor of Google Glass, Returns to COSM 2021. Parviz will be addressing the question, “Is It the End for Silicon Valley?” Parviz has an impressive history that spans engineering and health care issues, but he is perhaps most famous for his leadership in developing Google Glass.

Jules Urbach, founder of OTOY, to speak at COSM 2021. Tech philosopher George Gilder has called him “ingenious” and ”the most inventive software engineer” he has ever met. “Every single person should have agency to create,” says Urbach, “and…if we do our jobs right, everyone with an idea is going to be able to render things.”

Publisher of Popular Electronics To Speak at COSM 2021. Futurist John Schroeter is an author as well as a publisher and developer. John Schroeter’s technology for eliminating counterfeit drugs won the Frost & Sullivan’s Technology Innovation of the Year Award.