Dear Friends and Supporters,
Thank you for responding so positively to the public unveiling of The World Of Our Dreams’ vision at Star Trek: Mission New York.
Teaching and popularizing that World Peace is possible thanks to scientific advancement is a dream I have been working on for many years. And now - thanks to your enthusiastic responses - I have the "proof of concept” I need to say this is an idea whose time has come! I will be forever grateful for our interactions at the convention!
Please let me know any additional thoughts or questions you’ve had since then. I’m also interested in any conversations you’ve had with family, friends, or co-workers about The World Of Our Dreams. I want to support you in being able to speak about it, even at this early “in development" phase. You can watch a video of me speaking at the convention booth here… (It’s just 2 minutes long. Great for sharing with others!)
Since the convention, The World Of Our Dreams’ development phase has continued:
- I attended the 50th anniversary celebration of Star Trek at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, where Rod Roddenberry announced the Roddenberry Prize: $1,000,000 total for “ideas for a boldly better future". https://roddenberryprize.org I also participated in the costume contest (as Gary Seven with Isis the cat) and received special recognition for my choice of characters from Bjo and John Trimble, the couple that started the letter writing campaign that got the original Star Trek its third season.
- I published an essay in The Huffington Post on Sept 8th to celebrate Star Trek’s 50th by describing how it can help us have a better world for real. You can read that essay, “Oblivion or Utopia: Star Trek & Humanity" here.
- I attended the 50th anniversary celebration of Star Trek at the Paley Center for Media here in NYC, where I was interviewed by a local TV station and met the Executive VP for CBS Consumer Products. While my interview did not make it into the final report as it was aired, I have learned more about what it will take to partner with CBS from the Executive VP for CBS Consumer Products.
- I networked with people interested in gender equality in the media, at an event organized by the actress Geena Davis, who has an institute devoted to this issue. Google is helping develop a way of measuring the visual screen time, speaking time, and numbers in crowd scenes of women and men. That was just one of the fascinating developments discussed at this event, where I spoke with both Google's "Educator in Chief" and a high ranking person at Sesame Workshop (home of the Muppets) about my plans. Both are interested in following up, and the person from the Muppets said they had been discussing the idea of "Muppet diplomacy" already. The character of Lt. Uhura was such a ground-breaking, gender and racial equality part of the original series, I believe Geena Davis's institute is a potential partner for The World Of Our Dreams, especially since the lead character of the new Star Trek series is going to be female. (I mentioned this to Geena, and she had not heard this exciting news before.)
- I signed up for the pre-proposal online event for people planning to submit entries for the Roddenberry Prize
- I published another Huffington Post essay that targeted people following the presidential election, in order to show them there is more to think about than who wins in November. I say the results of that election are important, but I then quickly shift to how much more important it is to think about humanity's long term options. You can read that essay here.
- I have set up a GoFundMe fundraising campaign, to help me pay for the start up costs I've incurred so far and will incur to get The World Of Our Dreams up and running legally. A second fundraising campaign which I thought would accept PayPal will be deactivated because it turns out not to allow that form of payment. Apologies to anyone who wants to use PayPal to make a contribution.
In addition to meeting with my lawyer and accountant (to get the legal side of The World Of Our Dreams moving forward), these are my main accomplishments since we met. I will write again soon, with information about a first training opportunity (to take place in Manhattan, probably in late October)
What I ask from you at this point is this:
- Please send me stories / your thoughts since we met / questions, as I mentioned at the beginning of this message.
- Please share this news with others (I’ve attached a PDF of the flyer and Buckminster Fuller quote that were at the booth, for your use)
- Please let me know if you’d like to be a board member of The World Of Our Dreams. (If so, please suggest some good times when we can talk by phone about that.)
- Please donate to one of the fundraising campaigns, if you are financially able to do so; and please share them with others as well.
Thank you again for wanting the future of peace on Earth portrayed in Star Trek to happen for real! The forces of anti-intellectualism are strong in America right now, but we can teach people that they are fighting over things they no longer need to fight about! We can teach them that advances in science has made war obsolete! We have the knowledge to create the world of our dreams!
Live Long And Prosper!
Steve
PS Due to slight technical difficulties on my part, I am tweeting about The World Of Our Dreams using my @SteveBrant Twitter account. I hope to switch to @WPeaceByDesign soon
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