UCSD creates Center for Human Imagination


Imagination -- one of the least understood but most cherished products of the mind and brain -- will become the focus of wide-ranging study at a new center jointly founded by UC San Diego and the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation.

The two institutions have created the UCSD-based Center for Human Imagination, which will involve thinkers from fields as different as technology, sociology, politics, medicine and literature, especially science fiction.

Sheldon Brown, professor of media arts, UCSD UCSD

"We are changing the world so fast right now and the level of transformation is profound," said Sheldon Brown, the UCSD media arts professor who was named director of the center. "This is the outcome of imagination. We need a more thoughtful, deliberative approach to understanding how it works."

The perils and positives of imagination were a defining theme for Clarke, the British futurist and science fiction author who wrote such acclaimed books as "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Rendezvous with Rama."

The movie version of "2001: A Space Odyssey" was hailed by critics for the imaginative approach used by director Stanley Kubrick. AP/MGM

Clarke, who died in 2008, literally helped imagine the future. In 1945, he published a paper that laid out the basic concept for the geostationary satellites that exist today. Those satellites helped make the Internet and other wireless devices possible, shaping how people communicate and interact.

Tedson Meyers, chairman of the Clarke Foundation, said in a statement, “A number of excellent universities responded to our request for proposals to become the home of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, but the University of California, San Diego made the most compelling case.


Brown says recent advances in the study of how the mind and brain function have hastened the need for the new center.

"Every couple of years, we are literally doubling our understanding of how the brain functions," Brown said. "We can ask specific questions about how imagination works. Are there positive feedback loops we can build in to stimulate or enhance human imagination. That's something we need to study."

Kim Stanley Robinson, author Wikipedia Commons

The center is just beginning to sketch out ideas for research projects and public lectures. But Brown says the center has already decided to involve such well-known science fiction writers as David Brin and Kim Stanley Robinson, both of whom earned degrees at UCSD, and Gregory Benford, a sci-fi writer and physicist at UC Irvine.


