 Today, I wanted to talk to you guys about something I've always been passionate about and I'm assuming almost everybody else in this room Has as much passion about it as I do, but first let's go through some pictures How many of you know what universe this is from? Come on some sound and this one what about this one? Battlestar Galactica Okay What I want to point out is how? Entrenched into public culture are these figures Almost everybody who has anything to do with science Knows at least one of these three if not all of them How many of you know who is the first to envision the atomic bomb and actually called it an atomic bomb? So it was HD Wells in the world set free he described the atomic bomb Very well how heavy it is how big it is How well how large the damage area is and what the damage looks like and that was 30 years before Hiroshima Nagasaki and that was more than 10 years before science knew they could split an atom Everybody knows what this is. We just got a nice demonstration But who was the first to envision motion to control That was the unerred In years ago first pilot of Star Trek He envisioned computers with graphics that were controlled with motion yet at that time computers had punch cards in 1863 this was the cutting-edge transportation technology but in Paris in the 20th century the author predicted Fuel-powered machines that transport us all over the place, but not only that he predicted skyscrapers That had glass all over them, which was totally unfathomable at that time He also described a machine where you would put a written letter on one side and would Reproduce it on the other side of the planet and on top of that he described a network Where people would share their everyday news and everyday pictures? That was in 1663 so I propose to you all that Every piece of technology we have today every piece of equipment we have today has been foreseen in sci-fi at least 20 years before that These are technologies that we have today that were only science fiction Decades ago This actually looks like a Star Wars picture. I just showed you I here show you how sci-fi publication which is almost sci-fi publication per capita on the around the world and I'll compare it to you with the number of patents registered per capita Around the world and there's a weird coincidence here So my hypothesis is if you want to advance science You need to have a strong sci-fi culture But unfortunately the data I'm showing you right now shows very strong correlation But it does not prove the causal effect I could not prove whether it was sci-fi that driven the Prosperity and the intellectual poverty or was it the other way around was it this advancement that made sci-fi possible Therefore I wanted to start an experiment, but first let me get you to another Culture so we're here in the Middle East and This is the fiction we had Thousands of years ago Throughout the past hundred years. We have produced fiction that is known to everybody. We have the Arabian Knights We have Ali Baba and the 40 thieves and this is fiction that has been tinkering with the world's imagination for decades and At the same time we had science in this region that has Propelled humanity forward in an age that most of the rest of the world calls the Dark Ages But look at this this fiction is still influencing us today Till this day the fiction that was generated here hundreds of years ago are still playing with the people's imagination But if we look at our region now, we would find That the number of patents registered and the actual economical size is pretty low At the same time you would find that we almost have no science fiction writers in the region and This is something we want to change and that's why I've been working on an initiative for the past Few weeks actually more but for four years. I've been working on this We are starting This is a platform an open platform just like Ted where sci-fi writers and artists from all over the Arabian world would come work together To propel us into this sci-fi and let's work this experiment together and see if we if our science is gonna follow It's going to be yet a Kailan in Arabic dot com. So it's not even English letters. Thank you very much