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Held in Telluride, Colorado, August 11th through 14th, 2000, the first annual Festival was organized to celebrate the past, present and future of technology. The past, represented by Electric Age inventors and engineers: George Westinghouse, Nikola Tesla and L.L. Nunn. (Nunn was responsible for the construction of the first alternating current power plant for a mine in 1891, using the technology of Tesla and Westinghouse.) The current and future, represented by software gurus: Richard Stallman, Raymond Kurzweil and John Perry Barlow. Society Executive Secretary William Terbo spoke on the personality of Nikola Tesla.

One of the outstanding events of the Festival was the nightly demonstration of the 1.5 million volt 12-foot Tesla Coil operated by veteran Coil builder Bill Wysock. Nearly 500 people gathered each night on Telluride's closed main street for the show. At a local altitude of 9,000 feet, the Coil generated brilliant lightning bolts of as much as 20 feet.

Telluride
Techno
Fest

Thinking
Out of
the Box

The Legacy
of Technology
in Tesla's Telluride


Aug. 10-13, 2001

Past, Present, Future of Technology
Picking up on Physics and Metaphysics
From out of the thin air, and within

Tesla's worldview stems as a template
for a mechanistic paradigm that would
Lead the inventor to discover his most
Original creations, derived from the observance
Of the nature of all things around him, and within.

No event from the universe is separate from any other:
The Telluride Tech Festival is a linking of like-minded
Men and women who think out of the box canyon.

Welcome to Telluride Unbound …

August 10-13, 2001
Telluride, CO

From the PBS Home Video: "Tesla: Master of Lightning"

"Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was one of the most fascinating scientists of the 20th century. He invented, developed or imagined the technology that brought us electricity, remote control, neon and florescent lighting, radio transmission and much more … all the basic inventions that now connect the world with power and information.

"He was a brilliant and charismatic immigrant whole talent took him to the height of celebrity. He locked horns with Thomas Edison, J. Pierpont Morgan, Guglielmo Marconi, and George Westinghouse. Mark Twain praised his genius…

"Like many geniuses, Tesla was not a conventional man. He gave life to realize his visions, while others made millions with his inventions. Tragically, he died penniless and nearly forgotten.

Except in Telluride Colorado, where his legacy lives on in the very nooks and cranies of the Telluride Tech Festival offices of the 100-year-old Nuggest Building, first built by L.L. Nunn, one of Tesla's collaborating giants, to the very silent wood beams still standing to indicate the ghostly presence Alta, Colorado, where mankind, as a electrically wired society was born.


Talking with Planets in Telluride

"The idea of communicating with other worlds … has been regarded as a poet's dream forever unrealizable … (Having) perfected the apparatus … for the observation of feeble effects (from) approaching thunderstorms … so far from my laboratory in the Colorado mountains, I could feel the pulse of the globe, as it were, noting every electrical charge that occurred in the radius of eleven hundred miles.

"I can never forget the first sensations I experienced when it dawned upon me that I had observbed something possibly of incalculable consequences to manking. I felt as though I were present at the birth or the revelation of a great truth … There was present something mysterious, not to say supernatural, but at the time the idea of those disturbances being intelligently controlled signals did not yet present itself to me …

"It was some time afterward when the thought dashed upon my mind that those disturbances might be intelligent control. Although I could not decipher their meaning … the feeling is constantly growing on me that I have been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another."

NIKOLA TESLA, from, "Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla"

SETI Update:

Ezekial's Ferris Wheel?

By Douglas McDaniel

Someday a future society may wonder at the mystery of ancient ruin in what is now known as Interlaken, Switzerland. A strange manmade form, as seen from high in the air, will resemble lines reminiscent of a space station. Did this place have some religious significance? Were they some kind of signal to the Gods, or perhaps some kind of coded message to be re-interpreted by a future generation?



That future society never may know for sure. But one thing they won't likely guess is this: Those strange lines for the future ruin in Interlaken will actually be the remnants of a theme park.



The project, known as "Mysteries of the World," is a concept based on an idea by Erich von Daniken, author of such best-selling books as "Chariots of the Gods," which brought suspicions of the extra-terrestrial origins of man to the frontal lobe of pop culture in 1968, just as mankind was start to feel its oats in space. Though a scientific outlay of the great mysteries is said to be the attraction's focus, the idea is to appeal to all age groups.



It's certainly no surprise, at least not anymore, that subjects once considered mysterious and arcane are suitable fodder for generally mainstream venues. Just as certainly, the funhouse motif is a perfect place for Daniken's oft-ridiculed ancient astronauts cosmology. The project conjures images of photo opps with the kids next to a small man in an E.T. suit, of white-knuckle g-forces at the Ahknaton-a-tron, of a spin on Ezekial's Ferris Wheel. However, it should be thought of closer to Sea World, which at least positions itself as educationally minded. "The Mysteries of the World" is intended as more educational in scope, and, with any luck, a groundbreaking endeavor in interactive multi-media technology.



Daniken's view of ancient legends as explanable if interpreted through the lens of science fiction was celebrated at first with a series of best-selling books, only to be undermined as fraud later when it was shown that he had actually faked supposed evidence. But then, in the pre-millenial decade, his celebrity was raised again as a kind of icon for an idea whose time has come, and, in many ways cashed in with each episode of the "X-Files."



If you think the project's major players (Miracle Software, Sony Overseas) are dreaming up a mirage that might disappear the same way some of Daniken's scientific "proof" did by the mid-1970s, think again. The project's notices at its Web site say the theme park is on schedule to open in April of 2002 and will attract a half-million visitors a year, a draw that's the rough equivalent of an art museum in major metropolitan area. At an anticipated cost of 80 million Swiss Francs, Mysteries of the World has business partners that include Feldschlosschen Group, Sony and the Swiss Railroads. Miracle, a software firm based in Langenthal, Switzerland, will assist the endeavor with interactive technology.



"Mysteries of the World intends to present existing, unexplained mysteries of the world by using state-of-the-art multimedia technology," states the project's Web site. "Those responsible for implementing Erich von Daniken's ideas will attempt to create a meeting ground for the general public and the world of science in order to illuminate and illustrate the fascinating mysteries of the world."



Daniken, one of the most successful non-fiction authors of all time in terms his sales of 60 million copies of his books, should be credited for helping the metaphysical to bleed back into the hard skepticism of the 20th century by urning the anthropological explanations of human history into the stuff of science fiction. In "Chariots of Fire" he wildly speculated that in the dim age of pre-history, Earth was visited by extraterrestrials who were, in fact, in our own image. These Gods from outer space fertilized with female primitives, and when they returned thousands of years later, further nurtured the emerging genus homo sapiens. The breeding went on until the creature on earth was able to use technology given to them by the Gods.



It will, of course, be interesting to see how such intergalactic shennanigans might be portrayed in the theme park for all ages.



----Douglas McDaniel



World Mysteries Theme Park
Conceptual drawing looks like a combination of a space station and one of those See and Say child's toys. Get the corporate scoop on the players, specifics on the project and where the money is coming from.

Erich von Daniken home page
The master of ceremonies gets an upgraded site for an increased public awareness and promotional campaign. Links page includes network of fellow travelers.

Miracle Software
Swiss company that's involved with Mysteries of the World project offers "software that thinks."

AAS RA: Archaelogy, Astronautics and SETI Research Association
Organization determined to prove to the general public that extraterrestrials visited earth in the remote past.

The UPHAUT Project
A study on "air shafts" inside the Great Pyramid of Cheops, a definite stop for sacred architecture types.

The Skeptics Dictionary
http://www.skepdic.com/vondanik.html
Robert Todd Carroll's look at the low point in the ancient astronauts theory, when von Danniken allegedly faked photographs of pottery that he claimed to come from a dig. More attacks on his so-called science follows.