"Brilliant!...a eureka moment at the edge of know-ledge...a website that will expand your mind."

"Wonderful reading."

"One of the most interesting stopping places on the Web"

"Brilliant! Stimula-ting reading."

"Today's visions of science tomorrow."

"Fascinating and thought-provoking ...wonderful, inte-lligent."

"Edge.org...a Web site devoted to dis- cussions of cutting edge science."

"Awesome indie newsletter with brilliant contribu-tors."

"Everything is per-mitted, and nothing is excluded from this intellectual game."

"Websites of the year...Inspired Arena...the world's foremost scientific thinkers."

"High concept all the way...the brightest scientists and thinkers ... heady ... deep and refreshing."

" Deliciously crea-tive...the variety
astonishes...intel-lectual skyrockets of stunning brill-iance. Nobody in the world is doing what Edge is doing."

"A marvellous showcase for the Internet, it comes very highly recom-mended."

"Profound, esoteric and outright enter-taining."

"A terrific, thought provoking site."

"...Thoughtful and often surprising ...reminds me of how wondrous our world is." — Bill Gates

"One of the Net's most prestigious, invitation-only free trade zones for the exchange of potent ideas."

"An enjoyable read."

"A-list: Dorothy Parker's Vicious Circle without the food and alcohol ... a brilliant format."

"Big, deep and am-itious questions... breathtaking in scope."

"Has raised elect-ronic discourse on the Web to a whole new level."

"Lively, sometimes obscure and almost always ambitious."

THE VICTORY OF THE THIRD CULTURE (DER SIEG DER DRITTEN KULTUR)
How Popular Scientists from America Control the Intellectual Debate and Have Climbed to Ersatz-Sainthood
December 8, 2000
By Hubertus Breuer

Neither Jürgen Haberbas nor Hans Magnus Enzensberger land in the garbage because of this. Only the greying mandarins have little advice when it is necessary to explain how technology and natural science are changing our world with seven league boots. In order to understand something about cloning, genetic selection in embryos raised in test tubes, or the feelings of the expressive, red-lipped robot head Kismet at Boston's MIT, the classic canon of education alone does not help any longer. The old circles of intellectuals must allow the agents of the technological revolution to deliver the building blocks of a new world image.

English Translation

BROCKMAN'S WORLD (BROCKMAN'S WELT)
How the slogan "The Third Culture" has become a runaway success on the arts & letters pages
November 21, 2000
By Alan Posener

Why does science always confuse its methods — the reduction to simple principles — with the workings of nature, its models with reality, its philosophical questions with answers? Why does it believe, after its global prophecies are repeatedly proved false — fictional — although they seem to be true, that the world should react to them? What the Arts & Letters pages can and must bring to the discussion are the historic and philosophical dimensions, without which even science does not know what it is doing.

English Translation

New Discussions among the world's greatest minds; all editions are archived, easily searched.

Edge is the online incarnation of The Reality Club, a big-brain discussion group that began convening in New York in the late '80s. Contributors to this online publication, who tend to hail from the worlds of technology and science, offer their musings and responses to cutting-edge ideas

The New York Times
Critic Sees Flaws in Microsoft's Strategy
An Influential Scientist Calls Focus on Web Browsing a Mistake
By John Markoff
June 19, 2000

Mr. Gelernter's argument is spelled out in "The Second Coming -- a Manifesto," an essay published last week in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and posted on the Edge, a technology forum on he Web (www.edge.org).

The Independent
Laboratories against the literati

[Brockman] sees that science is a global genre, and . . . he recognises that "we're in a science world; we're in a software world".

He is also a partisan. "We have this bifurcation in the States where you have the business pages, which are filled with new technology and new exciting advances, and then you have the arts and books section, where people seem to have been brain-dead for 50 years."

New York Magazine
Bond Trading
At TED, the new-media version of a Mafia wedding, you rub elbows with the dons and capos of the Internet world and become an instant member of the family.
March 13, 2000
By Michael Wolff

The weather, though, from San Francisco down the coast to Monterrey, where TED is held, turned bad, and it suddenly started to look like Brockman's dinner might be short a few billionaires.

It used to be the millionaires' dinner, but in the enthusiasm of the bull market, Brockman upped it a thousandfold (certainly, among the guests, there were a lot of millionaires -- maybe everyone). Of course, the point is not the billionaires per se but the good fellowship that the idea of proximity to billionaires engenders. Does that fellowship disappear just because some billionaires don't want to take a chance on the weather?

New York Post
It's A Terrible Thing To Lose Minds
By Chris Nolan
March 2, 2000

It was billed as the "Billionaire's Dinner" and was described earlier in the week as a modest gathering of people who happen to be gosh-darn rich. But literary agent John Brockman's dinner for some 60 people in Monterey last week was more of a press-fest than anything else. There were more people who type the word "billionaire" in the room than people who actually hold the assets.

But with cameo appearances by Conde Nast editorial director James Truman, Time Out New York's Cyndi Stivers, Fortune's Peter Petre, Powerful Media's Kurt Anderson, news anchor Forrest Sawyer and Industry Standard columnist James Fallows, this was the year when chic New York media met the geeks.

The Wall Street Journal (Subscription Required)
Boom Town:
At the Growing Billionaires' Dinner, Tech Stars Move to Grown-Ups' Table
By Kara Swisher
February 28, 2000

MONTEREY, Calif. — Like a lot of things in the frothy Internet world, it didn't take long for an annual get-together at one of the industry's trendiest conferences to show mindboggling growth —in this case a change in its name from the Millionaires' Dinner to the Billionaires' Dinner.

And why not? Sure, precious few of the people at the dinner supping on ahi tuna and shrimp scampi on Thursday at Cibo restaurant actually had billions in net worth. But the crowd was sprinkled generously with those who had amassed wealth beyond imagining in a historical eye blink. The muscle and money behind tech stars such as Microsoft, America Online, Sun Microsystems and others had gathered at the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference here.

When the host, New York literary agent John Brockman, added three zeros to the dinner last year, there was more than a bit of giggly discomfort among the attendees. The general agreement was that the provocative Mr. Brockman, who also runs a discussion Web site called Edge.org, was poking fun more than offering a description. . . . .

The Wall Street Journal (Subscription Required)
"Digits" Column
February 24, 2000

You don't have to be a billionaire to get invited to the "Billionaire's Dinner" tonight in Monterey, Calif. But you do have to know literary agent/author/entrepreneur John Brockman, who makes it his business to know who is among the digerati. The dinner coincides with the 10th annual Technology, Entertainment, Design or TED, conference, which brings together Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

Last year's dinner guests included confirmed billionaires Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com Inc. and Steve Case of America Online Inc. as well as likely contender Nathan Myhrvold of Microsoft Corp. "It's just a fun gathering for a few of my friends," Mr. Brockman says. The stock market has made new billionaires out of some previous centimillionaire guests, so Mr. Brockman doubled the size of the dinner but claims he still has to turn people away. To add suspense to this year's event, Mr. Brockman promises two surprise billionaires who prefer to remain unidentified. Hint: at least one is unmarried.

Der Spiegel
Tear down All the Statues!
February 21, 2000
Interview by Joerg Blech, Johann Grolle

SPIEGEL interview with New York literary agent John Brockman on the business with books about science, and research scientists who become stars through writing:

I am not favouring the popularisation of science but rather genuine contributions towards research which are, however, written in a way that is intelligible to all. Unlike textbooks, these books are intellectual adventures. They touch upon the important issues of our time.

English Translation

Wired
From "The Wurmanizer" by Gary Wolf
8.02, February 2000

A few TEDs ago, [The Technology, Entertainment, Design Conference] John Brockman began hosting an annual Millionaires' Dinner in honor of his acquaintances at the conference whose net worth exceeded seven figures. But rising equity values prompted Brockman to rename his party the Billionaires' Dinner. Last year, Steve Case, Jeff Bezos, and Nathan Myhrvold joined such comparatively impoverished multimillionaires as Barnes & Noble's Steve Riggio, EarthLink's Sky Dayton, and Marimba's Kim Polese. The dinner party was a microcosm of a newly dominant sector of American business.

San Jose Mercury News
Web Site for Intellectuals Inspires Serious Thinking
by Elsa Arnett
January 10, 2000

Don't assume for a second that Ted Koppel, Charlie Rose and the editorial high command at the New York Times have a handle on all the pressing issues of the day....when Brockman asked 100 of the world's top thinkers to come up with pressing matters overlooked by the media, they generated a lengthy list of profound, esoteric and outright entertaining responses.