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"Praised
by everyone from the Guardian, Prospect magazine, Wired, the New
York Times and BBC Radio 4, Edge is
an online collective of deep thinkers. Their contributors aren't
on the frontier, they are the frontier." |
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"There
is much in many of these brief essays to astonish, to be appalled
at, to mull over or to wish for...Most of them are vitally
engaging to anyone with an ounce of interest in matters such
as being or whatever." |
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"What's
the big idea?...When the lightbulb above your head is truly
incendiary." |
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"...fascinating
and provocative reading." |
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"If
you think the web is full of trivial rubbish, you will find
the intellectual badinage of edge.org to be a blessed counterpoint." |
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"Recommended
read to detox a tired mind." |
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"...reads
like an intriguing dinner party conversation among great minds
in science. Don't
expect to find answers here. Brockman will have you asking
more questions than when you started—and may even change
your mind about the ideas you've always been convinced are
right." |
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"Brilliant... a eureka moment
at the edge of knowledge, as scientists ponder the imponderable.
... Visiting Edge will make pseudo-scientists
feel cleverer, and the rest of us more than usually stupid,
as we discover, with a jolt of pleasure, how little we really
know about the world." |
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"He
(Ian McEwan) loves
the spirited playfulness evident in places such as John Brockman's
celebrated website Edge, where "neuroscientists might
talk to mathematicians, biologists to computer-modelling experts",
and in an accessible, discipline-crossing language that lets
us all eavesdrop. 'In order to talk to each other, they just
have to use plain English. That's where the rest of us benefit.'
" |
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"www.edge.org...has
established itself as a major force on the intellectual scene
in the US and as required reading for humanities heads who
want to keep up to speed with the latest in science and technology." |
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"Intellectual
and creative magnificence." |
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"Open-minded,
free ranging, intellectually playful ...an unadorned pleasure
in curiosity, a collective expression of wonder at the living
and inanimate world ... an ongoing and thrilling colloquium."— Ian
McEwan |
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"Astounding
reading." |
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"...the
fascinating website edge.org." |
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"An
unprecedented roster of brilliant minds, the sum of which is
nothing short of visionary." |
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"Fantastically
stimulating...It's like the crack cocaine of the thinking world....
Once you start, you can't stop thinking about that question." |
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"Danger
— brilliant minds at work... exhilarating, hilarious, and
chilling." |
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"A
selection of the most explosive ideas of our age." |
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"Scientific
pipedreams at their very best." |
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"Strangley
addictive." |
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"Brockman's
cross-fertilising club, the most rarefied of chatrooms, has
its premises on his website www.edge.org. Eavesdropping is
fun. Ian McEwan, one of the few novelists who has contributed
to Edge's ongoing debates, suggests that the project is not
so far removed from the 'old Enlightenment dream of a unified
body of knowledge, when biologists and economists draw on each
other's concepts and molecular biologists stray into the poorly
defended territory of chemists and physicists'." |
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"Brilliant! Stimulating reading." |
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"One of the most interesting
stopping places on the Web." |
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"A
stellar cast of thinkers tackles the really big questions facing
scientists." |
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"It
is like having a front-row seat at the ultimate scientific
seminar series." |
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"Fascinating...a
lot of fun." |
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"Fascinating and thought-provoking
...wonderful, intelligent." |
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"Today's visions of science
tomorrow." |
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"You
can improve your own science education at www.edge.org." |
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"Clever
minds debate on Edge about God and the world: what
life is, what will result from global warming, or what the
most recent discoveries in immunology research tell us. It
is almost as colorful as the days of Louis XVI, when philosophers,
writers, and political thinkers disputed one another in Parisian
living rooms — and prepared the way for revolution." |
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"Awesome indie newsletter with
brilliant contributors." |
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"Everything is permit-ted,
and nothing is excluded from this intellectual game." |
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"Websites of the year. ..Inspired
Arena...the world's foremost scientific thinkers." |
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"Deliciously creative ... the variety astonishes ... intellectual
sky- rockets of stunning brilliance. Nobody in the world is
doing what Edge is doing." |
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"High
concept all the way...the brightest
scientists and thinkers ... heady ... deep and refreshing." |
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"A marvellous showcase for
the Internet, it comes very highly recommended." |
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"Profound, esoteric and outright
entertaining." |
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"A terrific, thought provoking
site." |
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"....a fascinating survey of
intellectual and creative wonders of the world...Thoughtful
and often surprising ...reminds me of how wondrous our world
is." —
Bill Gates |
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"One of the Net's most prestigious,
invitation-only free trade zones for the exchange of potent
ideas." |
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"A-list: Dorothy Parker's Vicious
Circle without the food and alcohol ... a brilliant format." |
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"Big, deep and ambitous questions...
breathtaking in scope." |
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"Has raised electronic discourse
on the Web to a whole new level." |
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"Lively, sometimes obscure
and almost always ambitious." |
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[By Date] New York Times, Internazionale, The Times, New York Times, Atlantic Wire, RSI.CH Radio, NPR All Tech Considered, Times Online, La Stampa, Il Giornale, Il Venerdi di Repubblica, Art News, Il Sole 24 Ore-Nova, Il Giornale (Italy), La Stampa (Italy), Il Secolo XIX (Italy), O Estado De Sao Paulo (Brazil), Pagina 12 (Argentina), Washington Times, Die Welt (Germany), La Repubblica, Huffington Post, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Publico (Lisbon), Suddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), Newsweek, Arts and Letters |
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BOOKS OF THE TIMES
A Rebel in Cyberspace, Fighting Collectivism
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: January 14, 2010
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. ...
[continue...] |
INTERNAZIONALE
28 GENNAIO
ON THE COVER
INTERNET ERGO SUM
The network has changed our
way of thinking? Meet artists, intellectuals and
Scientists around the world. From Kevin Kelly to Brian Eno, from
Richard Dawkins, to Clay Shirky, to Nicholas Carr
[continue...] |
The Times
January 28, 2010
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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January 19, 2010
The Age of External Knowledge
 Today’s idea: Filtering, not remembering, is the most important mental skill in the digital age, an essay says.
But this discipline will prove no mean feat, since mental focus must take place amid the unlimited
distractions of the Internet.
Internet | Edge, the high-minded ideas and tech site, has posed its annual question for 2010 — "How is the Internet changing the way you think?" — and gotten some interesting responses from a slew of smart people. They range from the technology analyst Nicholas Carr, who wonders if the Web made it impossible for us to read long pieces of writing; to Clay Shirky, social software guru, who sees the Web poised uncertainly between immature "Invisible High School" and more laudable "Invisible College." David Dalrymple, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thinks human memory will no longer be the key repository of knowledge, and focus will supersede erudition. Quote:
Before the Internet, most professional occupations required a large body of knowledge, accumulated over years or even decades of experience. But now, anyone with good critical thinking skills and the ability to focus on the important information can retrieve it on demand from the Internet, rather than her own memory. On the other hand, those with wandering minds, who might once have been able to focus by isolating themselves with their work, now often cannot work without the Internet, which simultaneously furnishes a panoply of unrelated information — whether about their friends’ doings, celebrity news, limericks, or millions of other sources of distraction. The bottom line is that how well an employee can focus might now be more important than how knowledgeable he is. Knowledge was once an internal property of a person, and focus on the task at hand could be imposed externally, but with the Internet, knowledge can be supplied externally, but focus must be forced internally.
[...] |
ATLANTIC WIRE
January 14, 2010
Deep Thinkers Debate: 'How Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?
By Heather Horn
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.
- We Haven't Changed, declares Harvard physician and sociologist Nicholas Christakis. Our brains "likely evolved ... in response to the demands of social (rather than environmental) complexity," and would likely only continue to evolve as our social framework changes. Our social framework has not changed: from our family units to our military units, he points out, our social structures remain fairly similar to what they were over 1000 years ago. "The Internet itself is not changing the fundamental reality of my thinking any more than it is changing our fundamental proclivity to violence or our innate capacity for love."
- Bordering on Mental Illness Barry C. Smith of the University of London writes of the new importance of "well-packaged information." He says he is personally "exhilarated by the dizzying effort to make connections and integrate information. Learning is faster. Though the tendency to forge connecting themes can feel dangerously close to the search for patterns that overtakes the mentally ill."
[MORE]
[...] |
RSI.ch Radio
January 24, 2010
Tecno-scienza tra immaginazione e realtà: dall'homo sapiens all'homo digitalis
a cura di Clara Caverzasio Tanzi e Gaetano Prisciantelli
[continue...]
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NPR - All Tech Considered
January 27, 2010
[continue...]
Times Online
January 8, 2010
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il Venerdi di Repubblica (Friday Magazine)
January 8, 2010
Science THEORY AND PRACTICE
BRAIN TRUST
Forward thinking and other ideas for the future described by today's greatest scientists
"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]
[...continue]
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Il Secolo XIX (Italy)
January 18, 2010
[continue...] |
O Estado De Sao Paulo (Brazil)
January 17, 2010
|
Pagina 12 (Argentina)
January 17, 2010
[continue...] |
Washington Times
January 15, 2010
[continue...] |
Die Welt (Germany)
January 12, 2010
Schirrmacher-Debatte
Macht das Internet nun schlau oder dumm?
Von Alan Posener
[continue...] |
 
FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG
O8 Januar 2010
FEUILLETON—DEBATTE
The Question of 2010
HAS THE INTERNET CHANGED YOUR THINKING? [Google Translation]
(German Original: Wie hat das Internet Ihr Denken verändert?)
By Frank Schirrmacher
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
Editor, The Feuilleton & Co-Publisher, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
[...continue]
[click on images to enlarge]
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FRONT PAGE
PUBLICO (LISBON) — WEEKEND MAGAZINE — COVER STORY
Technology
 IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY WE THINK?
By Ana Gerschenfeld
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.
[...continue] |
SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG (MUNICH)
JANUARY 10, 2010
TECHNOLOGY
 Thinking in the Internet Age
AS THE NETWORK FORMS US (Wie das Netz uns formt)
By Jonannes Boie
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.
The publication of the book "Payback", co-editor Frank Schirrmacher, co-editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung presents the German debate, giving the topic the the depth it deserves.
Prior to the publication Schirrmacher 's book, the American literary agent John Brockman, interviewed him for Edge.org, the online science and culture magazine.
Schirrmacher, in his book, also asked the question — Has the Internet changed thinking? Brockman has now taken up this issue, and formulated it as his fundamental question, which he asks at the end of each year of the scientists and authors who discuss and publish on Edge.
The answers have now been published on Edge.org. The authors are 131 influential scientists, authors and artists.
[...continue] |
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NPR —
ON POINT
WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING?
Friday, January 8, 2010
Big science thinker John Brockman asked scientists around the world one question: what breakthrough will change everything? We’ve got their answers.
-Tom Ashbrook |
|
John Brockman joins us from New York. He’s the founder of the Edge Foundation, which runs the science and technology website Edge.org. Every year, Edge asks scientists and thinkers a “big question,” and publishes the answers in a book, which Brockman edits. The latest, just out, is “This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future.” It’s based on the 2009 question: “What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?” The 2010 question, “How is the internet changing the way you think?,” has just been posted.
From Cambridge, Mass., we’re joined by Frank Wilczek, Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist and professor of physics at MIT. His response to the 2009 Edge question discusses coming technological advances resulting from deeper understanding of quantum physics. He’s the author of several books on physics for the lay reader, most recently “The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces.”
And from Berkeley, Calif., we’re joined by Alison Gopnik, professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley and an expert on cognitive and language development. Her response to the 2009 Edge question discusses the extension of human childhood. Her latest book is “The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life.” |
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NEWSWEEK
January 8, 2010
Sharon Begley
YOUR BRAIN ONLINE
Does the Web change how we think?
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. ...
[...continue] |
Arts & Letters Daily
Articles of Note: John Brockman’s Edge question for 2010 asks over a hundred intellectuals, “Is the Internet changing the way you think?”... more» |
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