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CLOUD CULTURE: THE PROMISE AND THE THREAT [2.2.10] ...A third threat comes from the new media moguls, the cloud capitalists: Facebook, Apple, Google, Salesforce, Twitter, who will seek to make money by creating and managing clouds for us. These cloud capitalists are the new powers behind global cultural relations. Their rise has sparked an increasingly vicious civil war with the media old guard led by Rupert Murdoch. This battle between old and new media powers however has distracted attention from the question of how these companies will organise cloud culture on our behalf. Elements of their business models resemble traditional public services: Google's work with a consortium of libraries around the world to digitise books that are out of copyright; ITunes U provides thousands of models of course material for free. However these companies are also businesses: they will want to organise the cloud to make money. By the end of the decade Google will have unprecedented control over literary culture, past, present and future. Leave aside issues of trust, privacy and security, commercial providers of cloud services will have strong incentives to manage their users to maximise revenues and so to discourage them from roaming from one service to another. ...
Introduction In 1991, David Gelernter, in his book Mirror Worlds, forecast the Web and laid the groundworlk for what is now becomeing known as Cloud Computing. Ten years ago Edge published David Gelernter's now-famous "The Second Coming: A Manifesto", and followed up in 2009 with "Lord of the Cloud: John Markoff and Clay Shirky talk to David Gelernter'". The Cloud is now front and center in public consciousness. A recent trip to Europe for a related EDGE-DLD event featuring Gelernter and the Feuilleton editors of Germany's two leading national newspapers, showed that the European views on the subject are in many ways quite different than those in the news, the blogs, and twttersphere in the US. Innovation consultant Charles Leadbeater represents the European view. He was commissioned by Counterpoint, the think tank of the British Council to write a position paper entitled "Cloud Culture: the future of global cultural relations" (publication by the British Council on February 8th). The following Edge essay is adapted from that document. —JB CHARLES LEADBEATER is a financial journalist turned innovation consultant (for clients ranging from the British government to Microsoft). He is the author of Living on Thin Air, and We-Think. |
"Everything is up for grabs. Everything will change. There is a magnificent sweep of intellectual landscape right in front of us." — David Gelernter
Edge was in Munich for DLD 2010 and an Edge/DLD event. The event, entitled "Informavore", is a discussion featuring Frank Schirrmacher, Editor of the Feuilleton and Co-Publisher of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Andrian Kreye, Feuilleton Editor of Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Munich; and Yale computer science visionary David Gelernter, who, in his 1991 book Mirror Worlds presented what's now called "cloud computing". Gelernter's June, 2000 manifesto, published by both Edge and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, was at the time widely read and debated. In it, he famously wrote: "Everything is up for grabs. Everything will change. There is a magnificent sweep of intellectual landscape right in front of us."
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In 2006, the artist and computer scientist Jaron Lanier published an incisive, groundbreaking and highly controversial essay about "digital Maoism" — about the downside of online collectivism, and the enshrinement by Web 2.0 enthusiasts of the "wisdom of the crowd." In that manifesto Mr. Lanier argued that design (or ratification) by committee often does not result in the best product, and that the new collectivist ethos — embodied by everything from Wikipedia to "American Idol" to Google searches — diminishes the importance and uniqueness of the individual voice, and that the "hive mind" can easily lead to mob rule. Now, in his impassioned new book "You Are Not a Gadget," Mr. Lanier expands this thesis further, looking at the implications that digital Maoism or "cybernetic totalism" have for our society at large. Although some of his suggestions for addressing these problems wander into technical thickets the lay reader will find difficult to follow, the bulk of the book is lucid, powerful and persuasive. It is necessary reading for anyone interested in how the Web and the software we use every day are reshaping culture and the marketplace. Mr. Lanier, a pioneer in the development of virtual reality and a Silicon Valley veteran, is hardly a Luddite, as some of his critics have suggested. Rather he is a digital-world insider who wants to make the case for “a new digital humanism” before software engineers’ design decisions, which he says fundamentally shape users’ behavior, become “frozen into place by a process known as lock-in.” Just as decisions about the dimensions of railroad tracks determined the size and velocity of trains for decades to come, he argues, so choices made about software design now may yield “defining, unchangeable rules” for generations to come. ... |
Times readers might have benefited by having a link to the original piece and the Reality Club conversation that included serious and informed thinkers such as Douglas Rushkoff, Yochai Benkler, Clay Shirky, Cory Doctorow, Kevin Kelly, Esther Dyson, Larry Sanger, Jimmy Wales, George Dyson, and Howard Rheingold. Link: "Digital Maosim: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism" By Jaron Lanier. An Edge Original Essay. —JB p.s. An interesting aside: It was only about a month ago, at a post-Christmas Edge dinner in Harvard Square that Marvin Minsky and Benoit Mandelbrot began an unrelated conversation which caught my attention as they were discussing "Kakutani", no, not the Pulitzer-Prize winning literary critic for the New York Times. They were reminiscing about their colleague Shizuo Kakutani, her father, the esteemed Japanese mathematician who came to the Institute of Advanced Studies in 1940 to work with Herman Weyl and then studied with John von Neumann. While in Princeton Kakutani was Minsky's advisor. He went on to become a professor at Yale where he had a long and distinguished career that overlapped the Yale tenure of Mandelbrot. (A Google search for - Kakutani Mandelbrot - brings up 11,800 links).] |
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The Edge Annual Question — 2010 HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK? MARISSA MAYER IT'S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW, IT'S WHAT YOU CAN FIND OUT NICK BILTON WE ARE CHANGING THE WAY THE INTERNET THINKS MARINA ABRAMOVIC Artist MY PERCEPTION OF TIME MY BODY, MY MIND NO ONE IS IMMUNE TO THE STORMS THAT SHAKE THE WORLD Italy: Internazionale (Cover Story), La Stampa (full-page profile), Il Giornale (two pages), Il Venerdi di Rebbpublica Weekend Magazine (on cover), Il 24 Ore Sole (four pages), Art News — Rai.IT TV, Il Secolo XIX; Germany: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (two pages), Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt; Lisbon: Publico (Weekend Magazine Cover Story); Brazil: O Estado De Sao Paulo; Argentina: Pagina 12; US: New York Times, Atlantic Wire, On Point with Tom Ashbrook— NPR, All Tech Considered — NPR, Washington Times; UK: New Scientist, Times Online, BBC World Service |
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ON THE COVER |
In 1953, when the internet was not even a technological twinkle in the eye, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously divided thinkers into two categories: the hedgehog and the fox: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Hedgehog writers, argued Berlin, see the world through the prism of a single overriding idea, whereas foxes dart hither and thither, gathering inspiration from the widest variety of experiences and sources. Marx, Nietzsche and Plato were hedgehogs; Aristotle, Shakespeare and Berlin himself were foxes. Today, feasting on the anarchic, ubiquitous, limitless and uncontrolled information cornucopia that is the web, we are all foxes. We browse and scavenge thoughts and influences, picking up what we want, discarding the rest, collecting, linking, hunting and gathering our information, social life and entertainment. The new Apple iPad is merely the latest step in the fusion of the human mind and the internet. This way of thinking is a direct threat to ideology. Indeed, perhaps the ultimate expression of hedgehog-thinking is totalitarian and fundamentalist, which explains why the regimes in China and Iran are so terrified of the internet. The hedgehogs rightly fear the foxes. Edge (www.edge.org), a website dedicated to ideas and technology, recently asked scores of philosophers, scientists and scholars a simple but fundamental question: "How is the internet changing the way you think?” The responses were astonishingly varied, yet most agreed that the web had profoundly affected the way we gather our thoughts, if not the way we deploy that information. |
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Edge is an organization of deep, visionary thinkers on science and culture. Each year the group poses a question, this year collecting 168 essay responses to the question, "How is the Internet changing the way you think?" In answer, academics, scientists and philosophers responded with musings on the Internet enabling telecommunication, or functioning as a sort of prosthesis, or robbing us of our old, linear" mode of thinking. Actor Alan Alda described the Web as "speed plus mobs." Responses alternate between the quirky and the profound ("In this future, knowledge will be fully outside the individual, focus will be fully inside, and everybody's selves will truly be spread everywhere.") Since it takes a while to read the entire collection--and the Atlantic Wire should know, as we tried--here are some of the more piquant answers. Visit the Edge website for the full experience. For a smart, funny answer in video form, see here.
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Science THEORY AND PRACTICE BRAIN TRUST "Between Possible and Imaginary" is the theme of the Science Festival which opens in Rome next week. The American popularizer John Brockman collected the forecasts of the greatest living minds about ideas that will change everything during their lifetime. From DNA to education, the book illustrates surprising and provocative discoveries from the world that await us. [GAETANO PRISCIANTELLI] |
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  The Question of 2010 On that Friday in January 2010 published by the American literary agent John Brockman, the question of 2010: How the Internet and networked computers to change the way we think? At the core of the debate lies the question asked by science historian George Dyson: "Is the price of machines that think, people who will not do?" Brockman, who counts some of the most important scientists of our time as his authors, this vision orbits on Edge.org with one hundred twenty-one answers. We print the most interesting in the features section. Unlike Germany, where the debate about the information age is still focused on palaver about media, Edge debates the target in depth. Who is planning what, where, by what means? If one takes the digital revolution seriously , one must ask to what degree the communication of the industrialized twenty-first century will change our thinking. The computer pioneer Daniel Hillis describes how even such a simple procedure such as the programming of the time on networked computers is now barely understood by many programmers. And he concludes, with regard to climate change and financial crisis: "Our machines are embodiments of our reason, and we entrust them with a large number of our decisions. In this process we have created a world that is beyond our understanding. Experts no longer talk about data, but about what computers predict with the data." Neurobiological effects of constant multitasking lead, as Nicholas Carr writes about outsourcing, for ever-increasing dependence on computers. What if not only decisions about loans and budgets were subject to the use of computers, but also those regarding resumes? After the recent incidents in America, profiling is an even more important means of web-based "pre-crime" analysis: Who is planning what, where, by what means? But profiling what works with terrorists can also be applied to in enterprises and workplaces as Cataphora.com has shown. Been overtaken by reality Some of those authors presented by Brockman do not find that the Net has changed their thinking. Others see it differently. Nobody, not even the skeptics, long to return to a time before the Internet. But many make it clear that what we experience as a user is in fact only a "surfing", a movement on the surface. The German Internet debate is stuck in the nineties. Brockman's question this year sets the chord for questions that take us beyond this set of attitudes. Frank Schirrmacher |
PUBLICO (LISBON) — WEEKEND MAGAZINE — COVER STORY Do you think the Internet has altered you mind at the neuronal, cognitive, processing, emotional levels? Yes, no, maybe, reply philosophers, scientists, writers, journalists to the Edge annual question 2010, in dozens of texts that are published online today Click here for PDF of Portuguese Original In the summer of 2008, American writer Nicholas Carr published in the Atlantic Monthly an article under the title Is Google making us stupid?: What the Internet is doing to our brains, in which highly criticized the Internet’s effects on our intellectual capabilities. The article had a high impact, both in the media and the blogosphere. Edge.org – the intellectual online salon – has now expanded and deepened the debate through its traditional annual challenge to dozens of the world’s leading thinkers of science, technology, thought, arts, journalism. The 2010 question is: "How is the Internet changing the way you think?" They reply that the Internet has made them (us) smarter, shallower, faster, less attentive, more accelerated, less creative, more tactile, less visual, more altruistic, less arrogant. That it has dramatically expanded our memory but at the same time made us the hostages of the present tense. The global web is compared to an ecosystem, a collective brain, a universal memory, a global conscience, a total map of geography and history. One thing is certain: be they fans or critics, they all use it and they all admit that the Internet leaves no one untouched. No one can remain impervious to things such a Wikipedia or Google, no one can resist the attraction of instant, global, communication and knowledge. More than 120 scientists, physicians, engineers, authors, artists, journalists met the challenge. Here, we present the gist some of their answers, including Nicholas Carr’s, who is also part of this online think tank founded by New-York literary agent John Brockman. If you have more time and think your attention span is up to it, we recommend you enjoy the whole scope of their length and diversity by visiting edge.org. |
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The online magazine Edge asked scientists, writers and artists, such as the Internet has changed their thinking. The answers are remarkable. ... Two billion people worldwide use the Internet. The debates about the new technology, however, are not the same everywhere. In Germany, for example, the discourse is limited on the subject of the net, as it is especially focused on media and copyright debates. |
Thinking in the Internet Age|
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Sharon Begley Shortened attention span. Less interest in reflection and introspection. Inability to engage in in-depth thought. Fragmented, distracted thinking. The ways the Internet supposedly affects thought are as apocalyptic as they are speculative, since all the above are supported by anecdote, not empirical data. So it is refreshing to hear how 109 philosophers, neurobiologists, and other scholars answered, "How is the Internet changing the way you think?" That is the "annual question" at the online salon edge.org, where every year science impresario, author, and literary agent John Brockman poses a puzzler for his flock of scientists and other thinkers. ... |
Articles of Note: John Brockman’s Edge question for 2010 asks over a hundred intellectuals, "Is the Internet changing the way you think?”... more» |
'CHANGE' LOOKS AT POSSIBILITES OF OUR FUTURE BY CARLO WOLFF
Such ignorance, along with studied avoidance of physics and math since college, didn’t lessen my enjoyment of This Will Change Everything, a provocative, demanding clutch of essays covering everything from gene splicing to global warming to intelligence, both artificial and human, to immortality. Edited by John Brockman, a literary agent who founded the Edge Foundation, this is the kind of book into which one can dip at will. Approaching it in a linear fashion might be frustrating because it is so wide-ranging. ... ...Overall, this will appeal primarily to scientists and academicians. But the way Brockman interlaces essays about research on the frontiers of science with ones on artistic vision, education, psychology and economics is sure to buzz any brain. Stewart Brand, the father of the Whole Earth Catalog, a kind of hippie precursor of hypertext and intermedia (the last term is a Brockman coinage), calls Brockman "one of the great intellectual enzymes of our time” at www.edge.org, Brockman’s Web site. Brockman clearly is an agent provocateur of ideas. Getting the best of them to politicians who can use them to execute positive change is the next step. |
THE EDGE ANNUAL QUESTION BOOK SERIES "An intellectual treasure trove" |
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The Edge Annual Question — 2010 HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK? Read any newspaper or magazine and you will notice the many flavors of the one big question that everyone is asking today. Or you can just stay on the page and read recent editions of Edge ...
What do you think? This year's Question is "How is the Internet changing the way YOU think?" Not "How is the Internet changing the way WE think?" We spent a lot of time going back on forth on "YOU" vs. "WE" and came to the conclusion to go with "YOU", the reason being that Edge is a conversation. "WE" responses tend to come across like expert papers, public pronouncements, or talks delivered from stage. We wanted people to think about the "Internet", which includes, but is a much bigger subject than the Web, an application on the Internet, or search, browsing, etc., which are apps on the Web. Back in 1996, computer scientist and visionary Danny Hillis pointed out that when it comes to the Internet, "Many people sense this, but don't want to think about it because the change is too profound. Today, on the Internet the main event is the Web. A lot of people think that the Web is the Internet, and they're missing something. The Internet is a brand-new fertile ground where things can grow, and the Web is the first thing that grew there. But the stuff growing there is in a very primitive form. The Web is the old media incorporated into the new medium. It both adds something to the Internet and takes something away." This year, I enlisted the aid of Hans Ulrich Obrist, Curator of the Serpentine Gallery in London, as well as the artist April Gornik, one of the early members of "The Reality Club" (the precursor to the online Edge) to help broaden the Edge conversation — or rather to bring it back to where it was in the late 80s/early 90s, when April gave a talk at a "Reality Club" meeting, and discussed the influence of chaos theory on her work, and when Benoit Mandelbrot showed up to discuss fractal theory and every artist in NYC wanted to be there. What then happened was very interesting. The Reality Club went online as Edge in 1996 and the scientists were all on email, the artists not. Thus, did Edge surprisingly become a science site when my own background (beginning in 1965 when Jonas Mekas hired me to manage the Film-Makers' Cinematheque) was in the visual and performance arts. 172 essayists (an array of world-class scientists, artists, and creative thinkers) have created a 132,000 document. (Click here to go directly to the responses). The are:
John Brockman |
THE EDGE ANNUAL QUESTION BOOK SERIES "An intellectual treasure trove"
NOW IN BOOKSTORES AND ONLINE!
Contributors include: RICHARD DAWKINS on cross-species breeding; IAN McEWAN on the remote frontiers of solar energy; FREEMAN DYSON on radiotelepathy; STEVEN PINKER on the perils and potential of direct-to-consumer genomics; SAM HARRIS on mind-reading technology; NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB on the end of precise knowledge; CHRIS ANDERSON on how the Internet will revolutionize education; IRENE PEPPERBERG on unlocking the secrets of the brain; LISA RANDALL on the power of instantaneous information; BRIAN ENO on the battle between hope and fear; J. CRAIG VENTER on rewriting DNA; FRANK WILCZEK on mastering matter through quantum physics. "11 books you must read — Curl up with these reads on days when you just don't want to do anything else: 5. John Brockman's This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future" (Forbes India) "Full of ideas wild (neurocosmetics, "resizing ourselves," "intuit[ing] in six dimensions") and more close-to-home ("Basketball and Science Camps," solar technology"), this volume offers dozens of ingenious ways to think about progress" (Publishers Weekly — Starred Review) "A stellar cast of intellectuals ... a stunning array of responses...Perfect for: anyone who wants to know what the big thinkers will be chewing on in 2010. " (New Scientist) "Pouring over these pages is like attending a dinner party where every guest is brilliant and captivating and only wants to speak with you—overwhelming, but an experience to savor." (Seed) |
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GROWING UP IN ETHOLOGY [12.18.09]
For I became a secret reader. In the holidays from boarding school, I would sneak up to my bedroom with a book: a guilty truant from the fresh air and the virtuous outdoors. And when I started learning biology properly at school, it was still bookish pursuits that held me. I was drawn to questions that grown-ups would have called philosophical. What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? How did it all start? Biology comes closest to answering these deep questions, but that wasn't the reason I ended up in the biology stream at Oundle School.
Richard Dawkins's Edge Bio Page [...] |
FOUR SIDES TO EVERY STORY [12.18.09]
The calamatists and denialists are primarily political figures, with firm ideological loyalties, whereas the warners and skeptics are primarily scientists, guided by ever-changing evidence. That distinction between ideology and science not only helps clarify the strengths and weaknesses of the four stances, it can also be used to predict how they might respond to future climate developments.
He is the original editor of The Whole Earth Catalog, (Winner of the National Book Award). His latest book is Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. [...] |
TO BEAT AL QAEDA, LOOK TO THE EAST [12.18.09]
Unlike Al Qaeda, the Taliban are interested in their homeland, not ours. Things are different now than before 9/11. The Taliban know how costly Osama bin Laden's friendship can be. There's a good chance that enough factions in the loose Taliban coalition would opt to disinvite their troublesome guest if we forget about trying to subdue them or hold their territory. This would unwind the Taliban coalition into a lot of straggling, loosely networked groups that could be eliminated or contained using the lessons learned in Indonesia and elsewhere. This means tracking down family and tribal networks, gaining a better understanding of family ties and intervening only when we see actions by Taliban and other groups to aid Al Qaeda or act outside their region.
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"Full of ideas wild (neurocosmetics, "resizing ourselves," "intuit[ing] in six dimensions") and more close-to-home ("Basketball and Science Camps," solar technology"), this volume offers dozens of ingenious ways to think about progress" NONFICTION (STARRED REVIEW)
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This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the FutureDON'T DISAPPEAR INTO A DREAM
I was not writing for an audience. I was writing for myself. I was making something for myself. And then just hoping that maybe somebody else had similar interests. But of course, in the early days, 75 percent of my audience would walk out after 20 minutes. And being a young Turk, I thought that was great, because it proved I was making real stuff. But I still have a very ambivalent attitude towards the audience, which is one of the things I've always hated about the theatre, because I believe that people, en masse, always have a reaction that is lower and less interesting than any individual person that you can confront and have a relationship with. RICHARD FOREMAN, Founder Director, Ontological-Hysteric Theater, has written, directed and designed over fifty of his own plays both in New York City and abroad. His most recent play Idiot Savant, starring Willem Defoe, recently opened at The Public Theatre in New York City and runs through December 20th. Five of his plays have received "OBIE" awards as best play of the year—and he has received five other "OBIE'S" for directing and for 'sustained achievement'. He has received the annual Literature award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a "Lifetime Achievement in the Theater" award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the PEN Club Master American Dramatist Award, a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, and in 2004 was elected officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of France. Richard Foreman's Edge Bio Page [...] |
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A FINAL WARNING FROM THE ARCTIC The Greenland ice sheet is five kilometres thick and melting fast. The effect of adding all that water to the oceans may become terrifyingly apparent around the world in the coming decades, but the effects of climate warming are already clear in the Arctic itself. Here's the evidence, presented in words and pictures by Alun Anderson.
A great place to begin a trip around the Arctic and discover more about its uncertain future is on top of this mountain above the town of Tasiilaq on Ammassalik Island. The view seems to stretch to infinity: behind me are the ice-sharpened high peaks and glaciers of eastern Greenland, to the west lies the great ice cap and the route taken by Fridtjof Nansen in 1888, on his way to become the first person to cross the ice all the way to western Greenland. ALUN
ANDERSON is Senior Consultant, and former Editor-in-Chief and Publishing Director
of New Scientist. Previously he was the U.S. Editor
of the journal Nature, and International Editor
of the journal Science. He is the author of After the Ice: Life, Death and Geopolitics in the New Arctic. [...] [Further reading on Edge: The Changing Arctic: A Response To Freeman Dyson's 'Heretical Thoughts'] |
"a stellar cast of intellectuals ... a stunning array of responses"
by Michael Bond LITERARY agent John Brockman assembles a stellar cast of intellectuals each year to answer a boundary-pushing question. His latest poser — "What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?" — has drawn a stunning array of responses, from nuclear terrorism to in-vitro meat. Some ideas are predictable (immortality, intelligent robots, designer children), some world-saving if they happened (oil we can grow) and some we'd be better off without (neuro-cosmetics). Many are self-indulgent technological fantasies. With contributions from Ian McEwan, Steven Pinker, Lee Smolin, Craig Venter, Richard Dawkins and 130 others of their ilk, the book is like an intellectual lucky dip. Perfect for: anyone who wants to know what the big thinkers will be chewing on in 2010. |
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"brilliant ... captivating ... overwhelming" Books to read (and give) now This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future |
TOXO
...The parasite my lab is beginning to focus on is one in the world of mammals, where parasites are changing mammalian behavior. It's got to do with this parasite, this protozoan called Toxoplasma. If you're ever pregnant, if you're ever around anyone who's pregnant, you know you immediately get skittish about cat feces, cat bedding, cat everything, because it could carry Toxo. And you do not want to get Toxoplasma into a fetal nervous system. It's a disaster. ... ROBERT SAPOLSKY is a professor of biological sciences at Stanford University and of neurology at Stanford's School of Medicine. His books include A Primate's Memoir, and Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: A Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases and Coping. |
"For those seeking substance over sheen, the occasional videos released at Edge.org hit the mark. The Edge Foundation community is a circle, mainly scientists but also other academics, entrepreneurs, and cultural figures. ... Edge's long-form interview videos are a deep-dive into the daily lives and passions of its subjects, and their passions are presented without primers or apologies. The decidedly noncommercial nature of Edge's offerings, and the egghead imprimatur of the Edge community, lend its videos a refreshing air, making one wonder if broadcast television will ever offer half the off-kilter sparkle of their salon chatter. — Boston Globe
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40th Anniversary Edition "There are certain writers whose thought is so important that it doesn't matter whether you agree with them or not. A verbal tension so powerful, an ascetic appetite so huge and consuming forces us both to accept the vision as a revelation and to resist it as a duty. By The Late John Brockman deserves to be read and experienced as few books do in these times of informational overload. — Cover Story, San Francisco Review of Books |
 [2010] "Fascinating" "Bold" "Overwhelming" |
 [2009] "Engaging" "Engrosing" "Brilliant" |
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 [2009] "Compelling"
"Stellar" "Important" |
 [2008] "Wonderful" "Persuasively upbeat" "Uplifting" |
 [2007] "Exhilarating" "Explosive" "Provocative" |
 [2006] "Fantastically stimulating" "Astounding reading" "Creative magnificence" |
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 [2008] "Compelling"
"Stellar" "Important" |
 [2006] "Irresistible" "Excellent" "Fascinating" |
 [2006] "Incisive" "Deeply passionate" "Engaging" |
 [2004] "Intriguing" "Engrossing" "Invigorating" |
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 [2000] "Dazzling" "Wondrous" "Outstanding" |
 [2002] "Provocative" "Captivating" "Mind-stretching" |
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Edge Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. |
John Brockman, Editor and Publisher |
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