It's hard to say. Ultimately I believe that truth trumps. Why not speak the truth as best you know it? Yeah, you can say you should have been more discreet or more subtle in communicating what you did. And there are certainly approaches that I might have taken that could have been more easy for other people to hear, shall we say.

So I hear those criticisms, and I respect the point of view, but at the same time we all have to live our experience and our truth. One of the things that I think Silicon Valley is guilty of right now is an overemphasis on often very shallow ideas. There are a lot of brilliant people in Silicon Valley, and there's also a lot of very robotic thinking. I think we need to be very open to new ideas and new perspectives in order for Silicon Valley to survive as a center of gravity for innovation and brilliance.

Have your own opinions about this stuff changed in the last two years?

I wouldn't say I've reversed any position at all, but I've gained a clearer view on all the things I've written about, whether that be science, the trajectory of economics, extraterrestrial life, whatever.

One of the things that gets lost if you just read the press articles of the era is that the press put a lot of words in my mouth that I didn't say. I never said I was definitely visited by an extraterrestrial -- those were not my words, but the words of half a dozen writers who then imprinted them on the rest of the public.

What I did say is that I woke up one morning and experienced the appearance of a human-like figure in my room. And we proceeded to have a conversation about space travel. And five minutes later he was gone. Was it my future self? Was it an extraterrestrial, or the consciousness of one? Was it a sleep paralysis episode? Or was it simply a bad potato? I do not know. I do not know. People way overinterpreted that statement. It was like one paragraph in a 600-page work that touched on the real issues, which are in fact very much meat-and-potatoes scientific questions. I've gotten just a lot clearer about those issues in the intervening two years.

What changes in the areas of physics and astronomy do you expect to see in your lifetime?

We are most certainly experiencing a second Renaissance, one where the expansion of our knowledge is far more punctuated than anything that happened 500 years ago. Simultaneously, a communications network is spreading around the globe, we've discovered water on another planet's body in the last week, we've published the first sketched blueprint of the human genome and now we're talking about a level of computer intelligence that rivals animal consciousness. And, in this particular area that I've been pursuing, there is the possibility that we will learn new secrets in the disciplines of physics and uncover new ways to propel and power machines. Those new ways could carry us to the stars and transform the footprint of civilization on the biosphere in a tremendously positive direction.

Do you find it odd that so much attention is being paid to you?

Here's where it really becomes quite ironic. You have brilliant physicists, absolute geniuses, like Kip Thorne or Michio Kaku, and others who are now engaged in the quest to understand wormholes and time travel and such. By comparison, my physics ideas are so mundane.

All I'm claiming is that human beings might discover or create a new type of propulsion system that causes motion to occur without shooting stuff out of a nozzle. They are talking about opening up a portal to move forward or backward in time, or creating a rip in the fabric of space-time and zipping across the galaxy through something like a black hole.

These are far, far more exotic physics ideas than the stuff that I'm talking about. The difference is very simple: What I'm talking about would have immediate implications, and some of these other ideas are much further out. That's why people tend to react with a more controversial attitude.

And, of course, you're a high-profile Internet personality who hasn't necessarily made his name previously in science and physics.

True, true. That's not my domain, but I certainly hope to finance the people who do. I'm not a physicist, I don't have a Ph.D. in physics. I studied it, I was a good student and got great grades and understand what I'm talking about. But I'm not going to be the one who comes up with a breakthrough. Others more gifted than I will bear this opportunity.

Going back to what you're doing with Project Voyager: Given that today's youth is raised by MTV, do you think it's going to be a challenge to get them to eschew the sites that let you download Eminem lyrics and instead spend time at a scientific portal?

One of the ways that I hope to succeed in exactly that objective is to present the wonders of the cosmos with the degree of creative flair that you see on MTV. What is more interesting than the diversity and amazing stories that span the universe? There are so many stories that remain untold, so many incredible adventures. We've barely scratched the surface of the opportunity to show people their nature. I see that as a challenge, and my objective is to create something that the average 15-year-old would love to hang out on.

What is the legacy you want to leave behind, with "The Truth" and Project Voyager?

I want to return to the public the sense of open-minded discovery that rests at the very heart of science. These days, we often find science so foreign to us as everyday citizens, because it often seems to be off in the mists of academics. When, in reality, science is so beautiful, and a simple way of life for every human being -- regardless of whether you have a Ph.D. or not. Scientific process is about discovering truth. So the legacy I'd like to leave behind, the epitaph might read: He found some truth that perhaps others had overlooked.

The Free Software Project
Read Andrew Leonard's book-in-progress on Linux and open source -- and post your comments.