STEVE BHAERMAN is an internationally known author, humorist, and workshop leader. For the past twenty-five years he has written and performed as Swami Beyondananda, the “Cosmic Comic.” As the Swami, Steve is the author of Driving Your Own Karma, Duck Soup for the Soul, and other books. In 1980, Steve cofounded Pathways Magazine in Ann Arbor, Michigan, one of the first publications bringing together holistic health, personal growth, spirituality, and politics. His latest book, written with cellular biologist Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, is Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future and a Way to Get There From Here. Steve can be found online at www.wakeuplaughing.com.
JEFF DICKEN is a Baltimore native and a graduate of City College and Northwestern University. A big-picture idealist with a background in film production and IT systems development, he has always been interested in the dynamics of economic systems. Jeff is now Director of Baltimore Green Currency Association, administrator of Baltimore’s local currency, the BNote.
CHARLES EISENSTEIN is a speaker, Goddard College faculty member, and the author of The Ascent of Humanity and other books. His latest book is Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition.
SHARON GANNON is the cocreator, with David Life, of the Jivamukti Yoga Method. A student of Brahmananda Sarasvati, Swami Nirmalananda, and Pattabhi Jois, she is a pioneer in teaching yoga as spiritual activism and is credited for making yoga cool and hip, relating ancient teachings of yoga to the modern world. Sharon is the author of several books, including Jivamukti Yoga and Yoga & Vegetarianism. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including Toward 2012, Semiotexte and Yoga Journal. She writes a monthly essay called “Focus of the Month,” which can be read at www.jivamuktiyoga.com.
SALLY GOERNER is the director and cofounder of the Integral Science Institute, a nonprofit research and educational center dedicated to developing the applications of Integral Science for human systems fields such as education, business, medicine, economics, and sustainability. She has lectured extensively throughout Europe, the United States, and Japan and is on the scientific advisory council of the European Academy of Evolution Research (Berlin). She has authored over fifty articles and several books, including After the Clockwork Universe: The Emerging Science and Culture of Integral Society and The New Science of Sustainability: Building a Foundation for Great Change.
AMIT GOSWAMI’s life work has been to successfully integrate science and spirituality, applying the principles of quantum physics to prove that consciousness, not matter, is the foundation of all being. He is the author of numerous books, including The Self-Aware Universe, God Is Not Dead: What Quantum Physics Tells Us about Our Origins and How We Should Live, and How Quantum Activism can Save Civilization. He has appeared in the movie What the Bleep do we Know? and the documentary The Quantum Activist.
THOMAS H. GRECO, JR., is a writer, networker, and consultant, specializing in cashless exchange systems and community economic development. A former engineer, entrepreneur, and tenured college professor, he is widely regarded as a leading authority on freemarket approaches to monetary and financial innovation, and is a sought-after advisor and speaker at conferences internationally. He is the director of the Community Information Resource Center, a U.S. nonprofit networking hub that provides information access and developmental support for efforts in community improvement, social justice, and sustainability. He is the author of many articles and books, including The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender, New Money for Healthy Communities, and Money and Debt: a Solution to the Global Crisis. Greco’s blog, www.beyondmoney.net, and his website, www.reinventingmoney.com, offer a wealth of information on the interplay of money, finance, economics, and democracy, and provide detailed explanations and prescriptions for communities, businesses, and governments.
JOHN MICHAEL GREER is a certified Master Conserver, organic gardener, and scholar of ecological history. The current Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA), his widely cited blog The Archdruid Report (www.thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com) deals with peak oil, among other issues. He lives in Ashland, Oregon.
Born in 1948, LARRY HARVEY grew up on a small farm on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon. In the late 1970s he moved to San Francisco, and soon discovered the city’s thriving underground art scene. In 1986 he founded Burning Man at a local beach, and has guided its progress ever since; he is currently executive director of the project and serves as chairman of Burning Man’s senior staff and Black Rock City LLC, its executive committee.
KEN JORDAN is publisher and executive producer of Reality Sandwich and Evolver.net. He has been an online pioneer since leading the 1995 launch of the award-winning SonicNet.com, the web’s first multimedia music zine and digital music store, which later became a property of MTV. As a consultant for start-ups, NGOs and foundations, his clients included: Amnesty International, WITNESS, the New England Foundation for the Arts, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and the Democrats in Congress. He is coauthor of the influential white paper “The Augmented Social Network: Building Identity and Trust into the Next-Generation Internet;” and is coeditor of the anthologies Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality (W.W. Norton, 2001) and Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age (Tarcher/Penguin, 2009). Ken collaborated with the legendary playwright and director Richard Foreman on Unbalancing Acts: Foundations for a Theater (Pantheon, 1992). He has written for Wired, Paris Review, Index, and First Monday, among other publications.
ANYA KAMENETZ tells stories about change. She is a journalist, nationally syndicated columnist, and author of Generation Debt and DIY U. She blogs at www.DIYUBook.com and Twitters at Anyananya.
BERNARD LIETAER has been active in the domain of money systems for the past thirty years in an unusual variety of functions. He is currently a research fellow at the Center for Sustainable Resources of the University of California at Berkeley. While at the Central Bank in Belgium he was responsible for the implementation of the convergence mechanism (ECU) to the single European currency system and also served as president of Belgium’s Electronic Payment System. He was cofounder, general manager, and chief currency trader for the Gaia Hedge Funds, one of the world’s largest offshore trading funds, during which time Business Week identified him as “the world’s top currency trader” in 1990. He is the author of fourteen books, including The Future of Money, which has been translated into eighteen languages. More information about the author, as well as his technical papers, are available at www.lietaer.com.
As an educator, journalist, and media producer, ANTONIO LÓPEZ seeks to bridge worlds—mental, cultural, ecological, and technological. López has worked in grassroots media for over twenty years and writes nationally for newspapers and magazine on issues concerning cultural diversity, arts, youth, media, and music. He is the author of Mediacology: A Multicultural Approach to Media Literacy in the 21st Century (http://mediacology.com).
BARBARA ALICE MANN, an Ohio Bear Clan Seneca, is an assistant professor in the Honors College of the University of Toledo. Her scholarship in Native American studies has resulted in several books, among them The Tainted Gift: The Disease Method of Frontier Advance, George Washington’s War on Native America, Native Americans, Archaeologists, and the Mounds, and Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas, as well as numerous articles and book chapters. As codirector of the Native American Alliance of Ohio, she lives, writes, teaches, and works for indigenous causes in Ohio.
PAUL D. MILLER, AKA DJ SPOOKY THAT SUBLIMINAL KID is a composer, multimedia artist and writer. His written work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum and The Wire amongst other publications. Miller’s work as a media artist has appeared in a wide variety of contexts such as the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial for Architecture (2000); the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and many other museums and galleries. His work “New York Is Now” has been exhibited in the Africa Pavilion of the 52 Venice Biennial 2007, and the Miami/Art Basel fair of 2007. Miller’s first collection of essays, entitled Rhythm Science, was published by MIT Press in 2004. His book Sound Unbound, an anthology of writings on electronic music and digital media, was recently released by MIT Press. Look out for Miller’s The Book of Ice, a multimedia, multidisciplinary study of Antarctica, which draws from the continent’s inspiring exploration and artistic endeavors.
STELLA OSOROJOS is a freelance writer and Doctor of Oriental Medicine. Her stories have appeared in Condé Nast Traveler, Spirituality & Health, InStyle and more and her memoir, Star Sister, will be published by Evolver Editions in March 2012. She maintains a private practice in energy medicine in Pennsylvania. Find out more at www.osorojos.com.
ELLEN PEARLMAN is currently a graduate student in Telematic Art, or artistic collaborations over high-speed networks. She is also a writer, curator, critic, filmmaker, new media artist and photographer who splits her time between Bushwick, Brooklyn, Beijing, Hong Kong, Calgary, Canada and the rest of the world.
DALE PENDELL is a widely published author and poet. A consultant for herbal product development and botanical surveys, he founded Kuksu: Journal of Backcountry Writing and cofounded the Primitive Arts Institute. The author of the acclaimed Pharmako trilogy, he lives in Penn Valley, California. Further thoughts on money can be found in his futuristic novel, The Great Bay: Chronicles of the Collapse.
DANIEL PINCHBECK is the author of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl and Breaking Open the Head, among other books. He is the editorial director of Reality Sandwich and cofounder of Evolver.net.
MICHAEL (TEW) RIGBY is a U.S. transplant, originally from St. Helens in the UK, and a long-time activist in the fields of hunger and poverty with a particular emphasis on innovative economic solutions. Former legislative director of RESULTS, he was responsible for the microcredit legislation in the U.S. Congress from 1987–89.
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF is an author, teacher, and documentarian who focuses on the ways people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other’s values. His books on new media and popular culture have been translated into over thirty languages. They include Program or Be Programmed, Life Inc: How Corporatism Conquered the World, and How We Can Take It Back, and Coercion, winner of the Marshall McLuhan Award for best media book. His documentaries include Merchants of Cool and The Persuaders. Rushkoff also wrote the acclaimed novels Ecstasy Club and Exit Strategy as well as the graphic novels Club Zero-G and Testament.
ELIEZER SOBEL is the author of The 99th Monkey: A Spiritual Journalist’s Misadventures with Gurus, Messiahs, Sex, Psychedelics and Other Consciousness-Raising Adventures; Wild Heart Dancing; and Minyan: Ten Jewish Men in a World That is Heartbroken, which was the winner of the Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel. He blogs for Psychology Today and The Huffington Post. Visit his website at www.eliezerhuman.com.
HARDIN TIBBS is a futurist and strategist. Now based in England, he used to work for Global Business Network (GBN), the scenario planning firm in California, playing a role in its early development in the 1990s. Trained as an industrial designer, he is a fellow of the RSA in London, and until recently was an associate fellow at the Saïd Business School at Oxford University, where he helped create the Oxford Scenarios Programme. His writing about industrial ecology while a consultant at Arthur D. Little Inc. in the late 1980s helped to define a new way of looking at environment and technology, and his ongoing research aims to chart the future path of industrial society. His website is www.hardintibbs.com.
ROBERT E. ULANOWICZ is professor emertius of Theoretical Ecology with the University of Maryland’s Chesapeake Biological Laboratory. A graduate of the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and Johns Hopkins University, he served as assistant professor of Chemical Engineering at the Catholic University of America before joining the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in 1970. His current interests include network analysis of trophic exchanges in ecosystems, information theory as applied to ecological systems, the thermodynamics of living systems, causality in living systems, and modeling subtropical wetland ecosystems in Florida (http://atlss.org) and Belize.
DAVID ULANSEY is a professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He received his PhD in Religion from Princeton University and has taught at Princeton, Barnard College, Boston University, University of California at Berkeley, University of Vermont, and Pacifica Graduate Institute. David specializes in the religions of the ancient Mediterranean, particularly the Mystery religions, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, ancient astronomy and cosmology, and the relationship between religion, myth, and the evolution of consciousness. David is creator and webmaster of www.MassExtinction.net, founder of the Species Alliance, and cofounder of the Planetwork Project.
PETER LAMBORN WILSON is a poet-scholar of Sufism and Western Hermeticism and a well-known anarchist social thinker. He is the author of Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam (City Lights, 1993) and Escape from the Nineteenth Century (Autonomedia, 1998), among many other works.