Great article about a great man. Thank you so much for helping to keep his memory alive!

I still remember what he told me about religion, laughing: "religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses. I am afraid to be struck by lightning one day while saying this."

He was indeed a perpetual optimist, and he said to me: "Don't panic." His views were true then, now and in the future. I wrote here some more comments for posterity: http://lifeboat.com/ex/arthur.c.clarke

Futuristically yours,

La vie est belle!

Jose Cordeiro (http://www.cordeiro.org)

Thanks for suggesting a memorial event, which I hope members of our scientific community — such as National Academy of Sciences and Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science — would consider.

I hold a different view on setting up any physical structures in Sir Arthur's memory. Sri Lanka already has a perfectly dreadful example of how not to do it in the Arthur C Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies (ACCIMT, http://www.accimt.ac.lk)established by an Act of Parliament in 1984 and coming under the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Sir Arthur provided advice, guidance and even material support during the formative years of ACCIMT. He also mobilised his far-flung network of international contacts in scientific, technological and engineering circles. As a result, ACCIMT has had access to a vast global reservoir of goodwill, partnerships, potential external funding and exchanges as no other comparable state research institute did before or since.

Tragically, the Institute has reaped very little benefit from all this for the better part of a quarter of a century. While ACCIMT showed some promise and potential in first few years during the mid to late 1980s, it has failed to establish itself as a credible, productive research institute. It has an abysmal track record when it comes to research publications in internationally refereed journals, or patents for innovation or other measurable indicators of scientific productivity. In short, the Clarke Institute simply cannot justify nearly 25 years of substantial investment of Sri Lankan tax payer and international donor funds. It is today a white elephant draining scarce public funds, and a disgrace to the distinguished man in whose honour it was named.

Sir Arthur never sought personal edifices or structures in his memory.
In the weeks and months after his funeral, many have asked me what kind of monument is being planned in Sir Arthur's memory. Ours is a land where people – and governments – love to put up ostentatious and perfectly useless structures to honour the departed. I simply keep quoting Sir Arthur's own reply, when a journalist once asked him that very question: "Go to any well-stocked library, and look around…"

He was a man of great knowledge, with a fine sense of humor, and a deep and active interest in the future of our species. We all miss him…

Sir Arthur had a wicked sense of humour. Talking about claims that UFOs regularly visit this planet, he said: “They tell us absolutely nothing about intelligence elsewhere in the universe, but they do prove how rare it is on Earth.”

He first approached my family in 1956, when he was diving addict hanging out on Unawatuna beach on the south coast of Ceylon. He wanted my father, a newspaperman, to print something he had written. My dad agreed. It was a good call.

Our families became friends. His house in Colombo was famous for three reasons. It had a satellite dish on top, long before anyone knew what a large metal dinner plate on one’s roof could do. It had its own elevator—an unheard-of luxury in a private home. And there was his souvenir-filled study, which he called The Ego Chamber. “This is a bit of a spaceship, and here’s a chunk of the moon,” he would say, holding up items from his shelf.

"Yeah, right,” we said, not knowing whether we dare believe him.

I do believe that there is a crying need for public intellectuals, not only in Sri Lanka, but everywhere. But the lesson we can draw from Sir Arthur's life is that the ingredients are difficult to find in one individual.

Just because you have an opinion; that does not make you a public intellectual. You need knowledge, preferably research, to back up the opinion. Just because you have all that, it does not mean that you can be an effective public intellectual. You must also be a good communicator, with a skill of sound bites and saying complex things simply and briefly.

Even if all that is present, there is the question of credibility and acceptance. If Sir Arthur was not a world famous writer, would he have enjoyed the easy access to media that he did? As Nalaka hints in the article, there were times when the philistines hit back, even at Sir Arthur. A true public intellectual will take on the hard issues of the day (hopefully not all of them) and will open him/herself up to criticism and calumny. Not everyone has the stomach for this.

I particularly like the opening quotation about the equal and opposite expert. There is the expectation that you have to be right all the time as a public intellectual, but how realistic is that. You need guts to stick your head out and say controversial things, without qualifications. And then, hopefully in a few cases, admit error.

It's really up to each of us to examine our lives and see if we have some or most of the ingredients in us. If yes, then we should consider speaking out. Unless one makes that effort, one will never know whether it was possible.

Another approach may be to brainstorm about who have the potential to be public intellectuals (not the usual suspects; but thinking beyond them). Then there may be merit in getting them together and creating opportunities for them to speak out. When I talk to the media, I find that they are desperate for people to quote and interview. In the US, think tanks do good business, making sure that the media have easy access to people who have ideas and who can turn a phrase.

This approach sees the problem as systemic, and not dependent on men (and women) of goodwill stepping up to do the right thing. In the end, an individual has to take the decision, but there may be merit in thinking of a systemic approach to fostering public intellectuals.