The gap appears impossibly small. After all, it’s  821,190,000 miles away! Yet size is deceptive on the edge of Saturn’s rings. In reality, our entire planet could fit through with room to spare! But the audience at Camden’s picturesque seaside Opera House is no less impressed. Humanity’s most intrepid adventurer, the space probe Cassini, is dropping through this ‘little gap’ to alight on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Unlike Saturn, which is made of gas (can you believe?!), you can actually walk on Titan, and Cassini is just about to. And unlike us, wincing at Maine’s winter chill, Cassini won’t be bothered by a temperature of –359 degrees Fahrenheit.

We are at PopTech, in Camden, Maine, USA and the speaker is spinning my head into a realm beyond. She is Carolyn Porco, Cassini Imaging Team Leader at Space Science Institute and she is just one of 18 extraordinary leaders in human endeavour speaking at PopTech.

This is like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, only this time someone remembered to bring the camera. These are real photos. A small buggy, crafted by her team, is now ambling over the surface of Titan nearly a billion miles away. And you know how it got there? (No amount of our primitive fuel could do it.) It used the orbits of neighbouring planets to literally sling-shot itself further and further into the solar system.

What image does the name PopTech conjure up? I imagined this would be my most geeky family outing yet. Me, my Dad and my two brothers ogling clever gadgets in gleaming displays. But nothing could be further from the truth. I came away feeling that my 32 years on this planet ought to have made a deeper and more lasting impression. Equally, I felt my remaining years might… (and should!)

We heard from Bunker Roy, founder of The Barefoot College in the Tilonia Region of India. This college actually excludes anyone with a degree. Instead, it provides a forum for poor & rural people to share their knowledge, intelligence and expertise on issues such as water preservation and energy supply. This has led to extraordinary breakthroughs in one of India’s driest and poorest regions. We heard from Serbian revolutionaries, deep sea explorers, pioneers in prosthetic limbs, gigapixel camera manufacturers and masters of the virtual economy being developed in the global gaming industry… to mention but a few.

We live in an age of irrepressible breakthroughs where the world each generation looks upon is transformed from the last. Today’s technology touches each and every one of us. It both threatens and redeems us. PopTech (even the terrifying and illuminating talk on climate change by Mark Lynas), is about the ‘rescue’ part: about how technology can provide breakthroughs to ease human suffering and forge the way ahead, if only by warning us of what dangers lurk. Poptech, the most wonderful adventure for geeks and non-geeks alike, invites us to go on a journey, fastening our seat belts but, refreshingly, reminds us to reflect that humanity, as a surging mass hurtling towards unknown perils, is perhaps not beyond redemption.

www.poptech.org