The first Brooklyn Futurist I met was Ellen Pearlman, a loquacious, acronym-dropping woman wearing a bright yellow scarf. Pearlman runs the Volumetric Society, which is an attention-getting name that inevitably leads one to ask “What’s the Volumetric Society?” (Answer: innovators exploring interfaces between body, brain, and spatially aware computing for the physical world.) Anywhere else Pearlman would be the most fascinating person in the room, but here she had competition. Beside her was Moon Ribas, a dancer who keeps a seismic sensor permanently attached to her arms in order to incorporate earthquakes into her performances. Moon was representing the Cyborg Foundation which, as she described in a thick Catalan accent, “promotes Cyborgism”. Upon further questioning she stated: “I fight for the rights of the Cyborg.”

I’d been at the Brooklyn Futurist Meetup for five minutes and had many questions (among them, why do cyborgs need rights?) but the biggie was this: why haven’t I come here before?

According to Mike Taubleb, the chief organiser of the Brooklyn Futurist Meetup, this is the largest regular gathering of self-described futurists in the US, which translated to about 35 visitors on an unusually cold April evening. What defines a futurist is vague, but by and large these are individuals interested in technology, art, economics and emerging trends. Some had a hippie vibe, others identify as libertarians. Some were just old-fashioned nerds.

While many of the Meetup’s gatherings are held at the Brooklyn Law School, a new event space at Livestream’s offices feels more fitting sitting alongside the toxic Newtown Creek. It’s industrial and counts sheet metal warehouses as neighbours.

This gathering focused on a talk by Morgan Gendel, a television writer and producer whose credits vary from the Pamela Anderson action/comedy VIP to the Neil Patrick Harris-voiced Spider-Man cartoon series. To futurists like Moon and Ellen, however he’s likely most revered for writing four episodes of Star Trek.

But not just any old episodes: Gendel wrote The Inner Light, a kind of Next Generation holy grail that debuted in June 1992. To a hardcore Star Trek fan, just mentioning the title (or perhaps humming a few notes that Captain Picard played on his Ressikan flute) is likely to get the tear ducts going. The Inner Light was recently named by Playboy as the second best Star Trek episode ever, out of the near-700 in the entire multi-series franchise, topped only by Harlan Ellison’s City on the Edge of Forever. (Disclosure: I wrote the article. Further disclosure: I’m right).

I overheard one young woman detailing her Star Trek drinking game (it was heavy on Riker)

The Inner Light is the one where the Enterprise discovers a probe that zaps Captain Picard into unconsciousness. He wakes up on another planet. He’s married. He’s someone else. Attempts to contact the ship are fruitless. So he does something we never see our space heroes do. He gives up. He lives a simple life. (This is a particular about-face for Captain Picard, whose rejection of personal relationships in favour of serving Starfleet is so core to his character.) He has children, he has grandchildren, he learns how to play a musical instrument and absorb a new culture, and, just as an environmental disaster is about to render his new planet uninhabitable in his old age, he awakens back on the bridge of his ship. And he’s only been out for 25 minutes. The twist is that the planet was destroyed a thousand years prior, and while no one could be saved, a probe could be fired off to implant the memories of the culture in someone, and that someone turned out to be Captain Picard. What makes The Inner Light of specific interest to Futurists is that the manipulation of Picard’s mind relates directly to the current work of groups like the White House and National Institute of Health’s BRAIN Initiative.

That real-world crossover was present in an energetic slide presentation, where Gendel kept referring to the connectome. What sounds like typical Star Trek technobabble is a very real term for a mapping of the brain’s neural connections. Gendel showed clips from other science fiction films (Total Recall, Inception, The Matrix and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) where manipulation of specific neurons drove the plot, and explained how less fantastic variations could be used in a less far-fetched manner.

As an example, in The Matrix, Keanu Reeves goes under for a moment, then opens his eyes and says “I know kung fu.” This degree of rewiring of the connectome is not likely, but it isn’t inconceivable to have someone’s neurons stimulated while they are, say, observing kung fu training videos and have those lessons “land” a little harder. All we need to do, in theory, is find out where those neurons are.

The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind model, says Gendel, could be used to, say, shave down the neurons associated with addiction, or bad habits. Once things are mapped, it really won’t be that difficult to see where such impulses live, and the implications for public health and education are, according to the futurists, extraordinary. (One audience member, citing his Orwell, was quick to point out it would be a snap for pacifying dissident citizens, but Gendel was much more optimistic about such things.)

Which isn’t to say any of this is happening any time soon, or that Gendel is actually a scientist. He did cite some scientists, such as Cal Tech’s Steven Quartz and Princeton’s Sebastian Seung, but Gendel is a writer of sci-fi (current projects include adapting Ursula K Le Guin’s The Telling for an independent producer) so it’s his job to think up uses for new technology. It’s a cool perch, especially if events like this keep him mingling with his fans.

I never fully understood what the Volumetric Society was, but its vibrant representative had some interesting stories to share about targeted light stimulation to mouse brains and stroke recovery. The performance artist/cyborg advocate hooked up to a small seismograph told me that there are small earthquakes every 20 minutes or so. Moreover, snacks and chicken wings in styrofoam boxes were free for all takers, and craft beer was available for a reasonable fee. I overheard one young woman detailing her Star Trek drinking game (it was heavy on Riker) and from elsewhere a man deep in conversation shouted: “No! Absolutely not! It’s feeding off the energy of stars, can’t you see?!”

The Brooklyn Futurist Meetup was a group that was definitely speaking to one another at a level light years above my head, but I was happy to add my name to their mailing list. Everyone’s neurons could use a little extending.