Mike Freedman: SRI brings things to the world others can only dream of

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SRI’s VP of Communications discusses SRI’s extraordinary heritage — and how what’s going on in the labs right now will be part of today’s kids’ realities. 


About six months after I arrived here at SRI, I had the opportunity to go on a tour of our robotics lab with one of our new board members. The board member is a terrific person, an astronaut, she had been to space, I think multiple times.

I remember sitting there in that room, thinking to myself, what would the five-year-old, six-year-old, seven-year-old Mike have made of this experience. This idea that I was sitting in California, and for someone like me, who grew up in New York — California had an almost mythical status — with a real-live astronaut, working with robots, would have just been staggering. Just unbelievable. Inconceivable to think about.

And then to think about the kinds of things that are going on in the labs right now that today’s seven-year-olds are thinking about and dreaming of. Those things are going to be part of their reality. Part of their world. That’s incredible to think about. There aren’t that many places like SRI that can do that — that can fulfill that mission of bringing things to the world that many can only dream of.

And that’s really special.


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