Building Pathways to Transcendence: Harnessing XR, AI, and the Metaverse Seeking Solutions and Shaping a Better Future

The Office of Innovation & Sustainability hosts second annual Innovation Lab address and regular meeting covering our core areas of action for water, food and energy.  The annual Innovation Lab address will feature a visionary inventor sharing how Maui County can learn and grow with technologies like Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence can create models for sustainable living, community resilience and livable futures.  The Innovation Lab meeting will focus on food sovereignty with our local leaders sharing innovation in our islands of Maui Nui.  The annual Innovation Lab address and meeting will be on January 30 Thursday at 12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. in the Mayor’s Conference Room at Kalana O Maui.

The address will cover Building Pathways to Transcendence: Harnessing XR, AI, and the Metaverse Seeking Solutions and Shaping a Better Future by Dr. Tom Furnes offering insights to how Maui community and county can coordinate together.

In an era of rapid technological advancement, extended reality (XR), artificial intelligence (AI), and the metaverse hold extraordinary potential to address humanity's most pressing challenges. This talk explores how these transformative technologies can serve as tools for fostering transcendence—elevating individuals and communities beyond self-interest toward greater creativity, compassion, and collaboration. By unlocking the latent human superpowers of imagination, curiosity, and love, we can create innovative solutions to critical problems such as mental health, education, and social isolation. Together, these technologies offer a framework for a future where individuals are empowered to grow, connect, and contribute meaningfully to a thriving, harmonious world. Join us as we envision and co-create a future where technology uplifts humanity and enables us to reach new heights of personal and collective potential.

Dr. Tom Furness is an amalgam of Professor, Inventor and Entrepreneur in a professional career that spans 58 years. In addition to his award-winning contributions in photonics, electro-optics, human interface technology, he is an original pioneer of virtual and augmented reality technology and widely recognized as the ‘grandfather’ of virtual reality. Tom is Professor Emeritus of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle, Washington, USA. He is the founder of the family of Human Interface Technology Laboratories at the University of Washington, Christchurch, New Zealand and Tasmania, Australia. Tom is a Fellow in the IEEE and founder of the Virtual World Society, a non-profit for extending virtual reality as a learning system for families and other humanitarian applications.  He serves on several advisory boards and runs his own company: RATLab LLC (rat= rockin’ and thinkin’) where he experiments with ‘far out’ technologies and concepts.  Tom and his students/colleagues have spun off 27 companies with market capitalizations exceeding $16B.

OIS, under the Office of the Mayor, is committed to driving environmental and social progress in through policies, programs, and initiatives, building a resilient community for sustainable prosperity and economic health for current and future generations.

For more information, please contact Joshua.L.Cooper@MauiCounty.gov. and (808) 318-0690.