To celebrate Leonardo’s 30th anniversary with MIT Press, a group gathered in Cambridge last November to consider legacy and futures at the crossroads of art, science, and technology. Participants reflected on how Leonardo at times exceeded expectations, overlooked or underestimated ideas, learned lessons along the way, and outlined emerging realities and altered futures on the horizon of the next several decades. The event served as a reminder that some conversations are less of a conclusive discussion and more of an ongoing exchange. In a sense, each issue of Leonardo adds to the discourse by engaging on the spectrum of legacy and futures, even as we are building both.
In this first issue of Volume 56, Morteza Gharib, Chris Roh, and Flavio Noca explore the legacy of Leonardo da Vinci’s creative genius in attempting to visualize gravity as a form of acceleration. Looking back at this legacy also prompts questions looking...