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Edge 325
August 31, 2010
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STEPHEN H. SCHNEIDER
1945 — 2010
[8.31.10]

Warming is unequivocal, that's true. But that's not a sophisticated question. A much more sophisticated question is how much of the climate Ma Earth, a perverse lady, gives us is from her, and how much is caused by us. That's a much more sophisticated, and much more difficult question.

Stanford climate researcher Stephen H. Schneider, a long-time friend, colleague and Edge contributor, died last month at the age of 65 of a heart attack while on a flight to London.

To remember him, Edge asked Andrew Revkin and Stewart Brand to have an email conversation about his influence on their thinking. From 1995 through 2009, he covered the environment for The New York Times as a staff reporter and he continues to write his "Dot Earth" blog for The Times Op-Ed section. With his 1968 National Book Award-winning Whole Earth Catalog, Brand was one of the founders of the ecology movement. He is the author of recently-published Whole Earth Discipline.

Below, is a 20-minute EdgeVideo interview with Stephen Schneider from our April 2008 feature on his work, "Modeling the Future".

— JB

STEPHEN H. SCHNEIDER, a climatologist, was Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change at Stanford University, a Co-Director at the Center for Environment Science and Policy of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a Senior Fellow in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. He was the author of Laboratory Earth: The Planetary Gamble We Can't Afford to Lose.

Stephen Schneider's Edge Bio Page

REMEMBERING STEPHEN SCHNEIDER: Andrew Revkin & Stewart Brand

STEWART BRAND: What I appreciated most about Steve — along with all the significant work he did on climate science and climate policy — was his readiness to declare in public when his mind had been changed by new and better data.


He warned about global cooling when it looked like particulate aerosols were dominating climate change, and then as soon as more thorough models indicated that the effects from increasing greenhouse gases would swamp the cooling effects of aerosols, he reversed his position right away and explained why.

Likewise, several months after he first participated in warnings about "nuclear winter," he publicized new studies indicating that the initial fears were exaggerated.

That's intellectual honesty.

ANDREW REVKIN: I first got to know Steve while reporting a long cover story for Science Digest on nuclear winter (published March, 1985), followed soon after by our interactions while I was trying to determine the fate of Vladimir Alexandrov, a Soviet climate modeler and spokesman on nuclear winter (and probable spy for someone; it was never clear whether for the USSR, USA, or both) who had spent months working on supercomputers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research with Steve and others and vanished in Spain in the mid 1980s while attending a conference on nuclear-free cities.

I, too, was impressed with Steve's eagerness to follow the data, including his work with Starley Thompson of NCAR that concluded the cooling effect of smoke lofted from immolated cities after a nuclear war would be more "nuclear autumn" than nuclear winter. Some scientists, particularly Alan Robock at Rutgers, say Steve was wrong about that conclusion, although my sense is there's enough uncertainty in the science of post-war cooling that it'll never be a significant influence should someone be pondering pushing the button. ...

[...Continue]

THE NEW SCIENCE OF MORALITY
An Edge Conference

Photo Album

Talks by

Sam Harris, Roy Baumeister, Paul Bloom

We are pleased to present three more talks — by Sam Harris, Roy Baumeister, Paul Bloom — from the Edge "New Science of Morality Conference" in July. Below please find (a) videos of the 25-minute talks; (b) downloadable MP3 audio files; and (c) transcripts of the talks.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Marc Hauser, one of the nine participants at the conference, has withdrawn his contribution.]

...I think we should differentiate three projects that seem to me to be easily conflated, but which are distinct and independently worthy endeavors. The first project is to understand what people do in the name of "morality." We can look at the world, witnessing all of the diverse behaviors, rules, cultural artifacts, and morally salient emotions like empathy and disgust, and we can study how these things play out in human communities, both in our time and throughout history. We can examine all these phenomena in as nonjudgmental a way as possible and seek to understand them. We can understand them in evolutionary terms, and we can understand them in psychological and neurobiological terms, as they arise in the present. And we can call the resulting data and the entire effort a "science of morality". This would be a purely descriptive science of the sort that I hear Jonathan Haidt advocating.

Text

MP3 Audio Download

And so that said, in terms of trying to understand human nature, well, and morality too, nature and culture certainly combine in some ways to do this, and I'd put these together in a slightly different way, it's not nature's over here and culture's over there and they're both pulling us in different directions. Rather, nature made us for culture. I'm convinced that the distinctively human aspects of psychology, the human aspects of evolution were adaptations to enable us to have this new and better kind of social life, namely culture.

Culture is our biological strategy. It's a new and better way of relating to each other, based on shared information and division of labor, interlocking roles and things like that. And it's worked. It's how we solve the problems of survival and reproduction, and it's worked pretty well for us in that regard. And so the distinctively human traits are ones often there to make this new kind of social life work.

Now, where does this leave us with morality?

What I want to do today is talk about some ideas I've been exploring concerning the origin of human kindness. And I'll begin with a story that Sarah Hrdy tells at the beginning of her excellent new book, "Mothers And Others."  She describes herself flying on an airplane. It’s a crowded airplane, and she's flying coach. She's waits in line to get to her seat; later in the flight, food is going around, but she's not the first person to be served; other people are getting their meals ahead of her. And there's a crying baby. The mother's soothing the baby, the person next to them is trying to hide his annoyance, other people are coo-cooing the baby, and so on.
               
As Hrdy points out, this is entirely unexceptional. Billions of people fly each year, and this is how most flights are. But she then imagines what would happen if every individual on the plane was transformed into a chimp. Chaos would reign. By the time the plane landed, there'd be body parts all over the aisles, and the baby would be lucky to make it out alive.
               
The point here is that people are nicer than chimps.

NEW YORK TIMES - DOT EARTH
August 28, 2010

ON HARVARD MISCONDUCT, CLIMATE RESEARCH AND TRUST
By Andrew C. Revkin

Earlier this week I was invited to join an e-mail discussion involving a variegated array of scientists and science communicators exploring a provocative question posed by one of them (I'll leave the identities out, but will invite them to weigh in here).

The conversation encompassed the case of Marc Hauser, the Harvard specialist in cognition found guilty of academic misconduct, and assertions that climate research suffered far too much from group think, protective tribalism and willingness to spin findings to suit an environmental agenda.

The question? "Maybe science—in some fields, not necessarily all of them—is much more corrupt than anyone wants to acknowledge." ...

WIENER ZEITUNG (VIienna)

THE CAPRICIOUS WAY IN THE FUTURE (Der launische Weg in die Zukunft)Leading researchers on discoveries that fundamentally changelife on earth

By Eva Stanzl

...But what if leading scientists provide philosophical reflections on discoveries that could change our future? Would they also exude anxiety and pessimism - particularly because the state of knowledge always deepens? John Brockmann, a former performance artist, editor of the Internet magazine "Edge" and head of a literary agency in New York, has obtained such considerations. Where he edited Volume "What idea will change everything?" (Fischer), the science looks sober in the future. Instead of painting colorful outlook on the wall, the authors explore the possibilities of existing innovations. Is no trace of fear, but not of utopia. ...

Google Translation | German Language Original

 

EL MUNDO
August 26, 2010

WHAT IS A MEMORY
Arcadi Espada

A correspondence with Sam Cooke:

Dear Researcher:

I am a Spanish journalist, who works in the newspaper El Mundo and is interested in issues of neuroscience. I read with great interest "Improving the memory, erase the memory: the future of our past," the Spanish translation of his article included in What's Next? Dispatches on the Future of Science, edited by Max Brockman. In this article makes you some references to the future possibility could erase certain memories and the possibility of adding new ones. I do not care now the plausibility of these hypotheses, if not somewhat earlier. What does it mean to isolate a memory?

Google Translation | Spanish Original

BOSTON GLOBE
August 15, 2010

IDEAS

EWWWWWWWW!
The surprising moral force of disgust

By Drake Bennett

A few of the leading researchers in the new field met late last month at a small conference in western Connecticut, hosted by the Edge Foundation, to present their work and discuss the implications. Among the points they debated was whether their work should be seen as merely descriptive, or whether it should also be a tool for evaluating religions and moral systems and deciding which were more and less legitimate — an idea that would be deeply offensive to religious believers around the world.

USA TODAY
August 8, 2010

NEUROSCIENCE OR 'NEUROSEXISM'? BOOK CLAIMS BRAIN SCANS SELL SEXES SHORTBy Dan Vergano

"There are real, and in some cases sizable, sex differences with respect to some cognitive (thinking) abilities," psychologist Diane Halpern of Claremont (Calif.) McKenna College argued in a 2008 Edge Foundation essay. "But we have no reason to expect that complex phenomena like cognitive development have simple answers," she added, arguing that neither brain wiring nor discrimination alone can explain the differences between men and women.

AFTENPOSTEN (Norway)
August 6, 2010

ANOTHER TYPE OF THINKING: TO BE AN "INTELLECTUAL" TODAY REQUIRES KNOWLEDGE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Bjørn Vassnes

John Brockman was a literary agent for Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, among other leading figures of what he called "the third culture," and he created a digital meeting place, edge.org, where many of the world's sharpest minds regularly participate in interesting, but understandable discussions on everything from the Internet's effect on the human brain to the root causes behind terrorism.

Google Translation | Norwegian Original

STRAITS TIMES (Singapore)
July 31, 2010

HAS THE NET STALLED OUR THINKING?
By Andy Ho

EVERY year, a United States-based non-profit group called The Edge Foundation poses a big question to renowned thought leaders.

This year, 172 individuals were asked to talk about the Internet. Here is a sample of the most interesting responses just posted on its read-only website. ...

ATLANTIC
July 29, 2010

THE FIVE MORAL SENSES
Alexis Madrigal

University of Virginia moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt delivered an absolutely dynamite talk on new advances in his field last week. The video and a transcript have been posted by Edge.org, a loose consortium of very smart people run by John Brockman. Haidt whips us through centuries of moral thought, recent evolutionary psychology, and discloses which two papers every single psychology student should have to read. Through it all, he's funny, erudite, and understandable. Here, we excerpt a few paragraphs from his conclusion, in which Haidt tells us how to think about our moral minds: ...

FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG
July 28, 2010
FEUILLETON

Moral reasoning

SOLEMN HIGH MASS IN THE TEMPLE OF REASON

How do you train a moral muscle? American researchers take their first steps on the path to a science of morality without God hypothesis. The last word should have the reason.

By Jordan Mejias

[Google translation:]

28th July 2010 One was missing and had he turned up, the illustrious company would have had nothing more to discuss and think. Even John Brockman, literary agent, and guru of the third culture, it could not move, stop by in his salon, which he every summer from the virtuality of the Internet, click on edge.org moved, in a New England idyl. There, in the green countryside of Washington, Connecticut, it was time to morality as a new science. When new it was announced, because their devoted not philosophers and theologians, but psychologists, biologists, neurologists, and at most such philosophers, based on experiments and the insights of brain research. They all had to admit, even to be on the search, but they missed not one who lacked the authority in matters of morality: God.

The secular science dominated the conference. As it should come to an end, however, a consensus first, were the conclusions apart properly.

German language original | Google translation

ANDREW SULLIVAN — THE DAILY DISH
25 JUL 2010

FACTS INFUSED WITH MORALITY

Edge held a seminar on morality. Here's Joshua Knobe:

Over the past few years, a series of recent experimental studies have reexamined the ways in which people answer seemingly ordinary questions about human behavior. Did this person act intentionally? What did her actions cause? Did she make people happy or unhappy? It had long been assumed that people's answers to these questions somehow preceded all moral thinking, but the latest research has been moving in a radically different direction. It is beginning to appear that people's whole way of making sense of the world might be suffused with moral judgment, so that people's moral beliefs can actually transform their most basic understanding of what is happening in a situation.

David Brooks' illuminating column on this topic covered the same ground:

...

...Advantage Locke over Hobbes.[...Continue]

THE NEW YORK TIMES
July 23, 2010
OP-ED COLUMNIST

THE MORAL NATURALISTS
Scientific research is showing that we are born with an innate moral sense.

By DAVID BROOKS

This week a group of moral naturalists gathered in Connecticut at a conference organized by the Edge Foundation. ...

Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia argues that this moral sense is like our sense of taste. We have natural receptors that help us pick up sweetness and saltiness. In the same way, we have natural receptors that help us recognize fairness and cruelty. Just as a few universal tastes can grow into many different cuisines, a few moral senses can grow into many different moral cultures.

Paul Bloom of Yale noted that this moral sense can be observed early in life. Bloom and his colleagues conducted an experiment in which they showed babies a scene featuring one figure struggling to climb a hill, another figure trying to help it, and a third trying to hinder it.

MEMBRANA (Russia)
July 22, 2010

QUANTUM TIME MACHINE RESOLVES THE PARADOX OF KILLING GRANDFATHER

Whatever happened to the positive protagonist of the standard action movie, we know beforehand - he survived. Law of the genre. Now scientists have substantiated a similar law of nature for the displacements in time. If the hypothesis is correct, the traveler will never be able to kill his grandfather in the past: something must reject the bullet, knife or a brick in the last minute.

Google Translation | Russian Language Original

Now, it's true that, as scientists, our basic job is to describe the world as it is. But I don't think that that's the only thing that matters. In fact, I think the reason why we're here, the reason why we think this is such an exciting topic, is not that we think that the new moral psychology is going to cure cancer. Rather, we think that understanding this aspect of human nature is going to perhaps change the way we think and change the way we respond to important problems and issues in the real world. If all we were going to do is just describe how people think and never do anything with it, never use our knowledge to change the way we relate to our problems, then I don't think there would be much of a payoff. I think that applying our scientific knowledge to real problems is the payoff.

Text

JONATHAN HAIDT'S TALK

I just briefly want to say, I think it's also crucial, as long as you're going to be a nativist and say, "oh, you know, evolution, it's innate," you also have to be a constructivist. I'm all in favor of reductionism, as long as it's paired with emergentism. You've got to be able to go down to the low level, but then also up to the level of institutions and cultural traditions and, you know, all kinds of local factors. A dictum of cultural psychology is that "culture and psyche make each other up." You know, we psychologists are specialists in the psyche. What are the gears turning in the mind? But those gears turn, and they evolved to turn, in various ecological and economic contexts. We've got to look at the two-way relations between psychology and the level above us, as well as the reductionist or neural level below us.

THE HILLIS KNOWLEDGE WEB
An Idea Whose Time Has Come [7.19.10]

In retrospect the key idea in the "Aristotle" essay was this: if humans could contribute their knowledge to a database that could be read by computers, then the computers could present that knowledge to humans in the time, place and format that would be most useful to them.  The missing link to make the idea work was a universal database containing all human knowledge, represented in a form that could be accessed, filtered and interpreted by computers.

One might reasonably ask: Why isn't that database the Wikipedia or even the World Wide Web? The answer is that these depositories of knowledge are designed to be read directly by humans, not interpreted by computers. They confound the presentation of information with the information itself. The crucial difference of the knowledge web is that the information is represented in the database, while the presentation is generated dynamically. Like Neal Stephenson's storybook, the information is filtered, selected and presented according to the specific needs of the viewer.


W. Daniel ("Danny") Hillis


On July 17th, buried in the news on a summer Friday afternoon, was the announcement that Google had acquired Metaweb.

It all began with the technological breakthroughs in the realm of massively parallel computers and their associated algorithms. Credit for this goes to Hillis who is primarily responsible for having broken through the von Neumann bottleneck of the serial computer.

At MIT in the late seventies, Hillis built his "connection machine," a computer that makes use of integrated circuits and, in its parallel operations, closely reflects the workings of the human mind. In 1983, he spun off a computer company called Thinking Machines, which built the world's fastest supercomputer by utilizing parallel architecture.

Hillis's computers, which were fast enough to simulate the process of evolution itself, showed that programs of random instructions can, by competing, produce new generations of programs — an approach that led to the creation of his Knowledge Web. Hillis's work demonstrates that when systems are not engineered but instead allowed to evolve — to build themselves — then the resultant whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Simple entities working together produce some complex thing that transcends them; the implications for biology, engineering, and physics have been, and will increasingly be, enormous. ...

[...]

THE TECHNIUM
July , 2010

PREDICTING THE PRESENT, FIRST FIVE YEARS OF WIRED
Kevin Kelly

SALON
July 7, 2010

CAN THE INTERNET SAVE THE BOOK?
Online luminary Clay Shirky explains the new digital literary revolution — - and how the Web will change reading

By Andrew Keen, Barnes & Noble Review

DIE PRESSE
July 10, 2010

MARGINALIE

DA VERDREHEN WISSENSCHAFTLER DIE AUGEN [AS SCIENTISTS ROLL THEIR EYES]
Anne-Catherine Simon

German Language Original | Google Translation

BOING BOING
July 8, 2010

Why We Talk to Terrorists: response to Supreme Court ruling on "material support" of foreign terrorist groups
Xeni Jardin

MEDGADGET
June 14, 2010

HOW TOXOPLASMA AFFECTS HUMAN AND ANIMAL BEHAVIOR

COMPUTING
March 4, 2010

THE DANGERS AND DELIGHTS OF THE WEB
By Tom Young

DREAM-LOGIC, THE INTERNET AND ARTIFICIAL THOUGHT [7.8.10]
By David Gelernter

Will computers be able to think again? And what Sigmund Freud would have to do with cyberspace? Internet pioneer David Gelernter predicts the next stage of development of artificial intelligence.


This is the second in a series of essays by Gelernter commissioned by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The German translation was published on June 22nd ("Ein Geist aus Software").

DAVID GELERNTER is a professor of computer science at Yale and chief scientist at Mirror Worlds Technologies (New Haven). His research centers on information management, parallel programming, and artificial intelligence. The "tuple spaces" introduced in Nicholas Carriero and Gelernter's Linda system (1983) are the basis of many computer communication systems worldwide. He is the author of Mirror Worlds, and Drawing a Life: Surviving the Unabomber.

David Gelernter's Edge Bio Page

FURTHER READING ON EDGE:
"Time To Start Taking The Internet Seriously" By David Gelernter
"Cloud Culture: The Promise And The Threat" By Charles Leadbeater
Edge@DLD: "Informavore": David Gelernter, Andrian Kreye, Frank Schirrmacher, John Brockman
"The Age of the Informavore": A Talk with Frank Schirrmacher
"Lord of the Cloud": John Markoff and Clay Shirky talk to David Gelernter
"The Second Coming: A Manifesto" by David Gelernter
The Edge Annual Question 2010: "How Is The Internet Changing the Way You Think?"

[...]

DEUTSCHLANDRADIO KULTUR
July 1, 2010

NACHWUCHWISSENSCHAFTLER DISKUTIEREN IHRE FORSCHUNG
[LEADING YOUNG SCIENTISTS DISCUSS THEIR RESEARCH]

[Audio: click here]

Max Brockman (ed.): "The Future Makers. The Nobel Prize Winners of Tomorrow Reveal What They Are Researching," S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2010, 270 pages

18 young scientists show which issues the company must confront in the future. The focus is the question of the nature of man.

THE SCIENTIST
July 1, 2010

EAVESDROPPINGS
Science Quotations of the Month

DIE WELT
26.06.10

EASYGOING INTO SPACE (LEICHTFÜSSIG INS WELTALL)
Four Science Books Explain Very Simply How Life Works
By Alan Posener

[German Original — Google Translation]

GENTLEMAN'S QUARTERLY (Britain)
July, 2010

A key feature and sought-after invitation at TED, hosted on the second night by the literary agent John Brockman, is the Billionaires' Dinner — row upon row of the world's most successful (and richest) human beings ...

[See: The Billionaires' Dinner]

IL SOLE 24 ORE
July 1, 2010

E SE IL TEMPO FOSSE SOLO LA COSTRUZIONE DEL CERVELLO? (BRAIN TIME)
Giulia Crivelli

By DAVID M. EAGLEMAN

[Italian Original]

[First Published by Edge: Brain Time By David M. Eagleman]

INVESTIMENT E NOTICIAS
July 1, 2010

TECHNOLOGY CHOICE AND THE SEVENTH UNITED
Ruy Guerra de Queiroz Barreto, Associate Professor, Center for Informatics, UFPE

[Portugese Original — Google Translation]

SUEDDEUSTCHE ZEITUNG
June 21, 2010

NEWS FROM THE WEB [NACHRICHTEN AUS DEM NETZ]
Michael Moorstedt

Carr responded quickly to Pinker, which this time he published on the science portal edge.org. For the time being, he has the last word. But the feud continues, and knowledge about the actual damage to our brains remains more diffuse. Few commentators show themselves as relaxed as the network optimist Clay Shirky, who has commented recently that the situation of cognitive surplus involves a new form of literacy. This does not depend on the media, but primarily by a more precise adjustment of one's own filter and use of time.

WASHINGTON POST
June 24, 2010

ON SUCCESS

FROM BOOKS TO BOARDROOM
Virginia Bianco-Mathis

Q: We all need advice as we seek success in our careers and lives. What are your five favorite business books, and why? What advice wasn't so helpful?

I believe there are three "must reads" for business. ...

... Last is a quasi-business book entitled "This Will Change Everything" (Brockman, 2010).

A BIG QUESTION

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Last month I received an email from Melissa Ludtke, editor of Nieman Reports:

Writing to you as the editor of Nieman Reports, www.niemanreports.com, certainly not the most trendy Web site you've ever seen, but we hope one offering something of value, primarily I suspect for journalists, though a few others venture our way, too.

Heading toward our Summer 2010 issue — in the planning stage now, and so I'd welcome the chance to talk with you. Topic: your 2010 "big question" — - many of the answers to which I've read on your Web site — which draws a direct line to the core of what we are going to be exploring —-through the voices and experiences of journalists and others — in the Summer 2010 issue of our magazine, to be published in June.

The edition has been published, and my essay on the Edge Question, along with pieces by Nicholas Carr, Douglas Rushkoff, Sherry Turkle, and Esther Wojcicki, are available at the link below in the Summer 2010 issue of Nieman Reports, a lively, timely, and interesting publication. — JB]

[Our sister publication Nieman Reports is out with its latest issue, and its focus is the new digital landscape of journalism. There are lots of interesting articles, and we'll be highlighting a few here over the next few days. Here, John Brockman writes about how he came to ask a passel of intellectual luminaries how the Internet is changing how they think. —Josh]

[Keep reading at Nieman Reports »]

A BIG QUESTION: 'HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?'

Edge posed this question; discover how a wide range of thinkers responded.

By John Brockman

As each new year approaches, John Brockman, founder of Edge, an online publication, consults with three of the original members of Edge—Stewart Brand, founder and editor of Whole Earth Catalog; Kevin Kelly, who helped to launch Wired in 1993 and wrote "What Technology Wants," a book to be published in October (Viking Penguin); and George Dyson, a science historian who is the author of several books including "Darwin Among the Machines." Together they create the Edge Annual Question—which Brockman then sends out to the Edge list to invite responses. He receives these commentaries by e-mail, which are then edited. Edge is a read-only site. There is no direct posting nor is Edge open for comments.

Brockman has been asking an Edge Annual Question for the past 13 years. In this essay, he explains what makes a question a good one to ask and shares some responses to this year's question: "How is the Internet changing the way you think?"

 RELATED ARTICLE
"Origins of Edge"

Read the responses in their entirety »


It's not easy coming up with a question. As the artist James Lee Byars used to say: "I can answer the question, but am I bright enough to ask it?" Edge is a conversation. We are looking for questions that inspire answers we can't possibly predict. Surprise me with an answer I never could have guessed. My goal is to provoke people into thinking thoughts that they normally might not have.

The art of a good question is to find a balance between abstraction and the personal, to ask a question that has many answers, or at least one for which you don't know the answer. It's a question distant enough to encourage abstractions and not so specific that it's about breakfast. A good question encourages answers that are grounded in experience but bigger than that experience alone.

Before we arrived at the 2010 question, we went through several months of considering other questions. Eventually I came up with the idea of asking how the Internet is affecting the scientific work, lives, minds and reality of the contributors. Kevin Kelly responded:

John, you pioneered the idea of asking smart folks what question they are asking themselves. Well I've noticed in the past few years there is one question everyone on your list is asking themselves these days and that is, is the Internet making me smarter or stupid? Nick Carr tackled the question on his terms, but did not answer it for everyone. In fact, I would love to hear the Edge list tell me their version: Is the Internet improving them or improving their work, and how is it changing how they think? I am less interested in the general "us" and more interested in the specific "you"—how it is affecting each one personally. Nearly every discussion I have with someone these days will arrive at this question sooner or later. Why not tackle it head on?

And so we did....

[...continue]


THE EDGE ANNUAL QUESTION BOOK SERIES
Edited by John Brockman

"An intellectual treasure trove"
San Francisco Chronicle

THIS WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING: IDEAS THAT WILL SHAPE THE FUTURE(*)
Edited by John Brockman
Harper Perennial
[2010]

NOW IN BOOKSTORES AND ONLINE!


[click to enlarge]

"Fascinating"
"Bold"
"Overwhelming"

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.


"a provocative, demanding clutch of essays covering everything from gene splicing to global warming to intelligence, both artificial and human, to immortality... 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." (Chicago Sun-Times)

"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)

* based On The Edge Annual Question — 2009: "What Will Change Everything?)

[2009]

"Compelling"


"Stellar"
"Important"

[2008]

"Wonderful"
"Persuasively upbeat"
"Uplifting"


[2007]

"Exhilarating"
"Explosive"
"Provocative"

[2006]

"Fantastically stimulating"
"Astounding reading"
"Creative magnificence"


[1969 — 40th Anniversary Edition]

"There are certain writers whose thought is so important that it doesn't matter whether you agree with them or not.
— San Francisco Review of Books, cover story

"The most important book since Wittgenstein's Tractatus."
— Alan Watts


[2009]

"Engaging"... "Engrosing" ... "Brilliant"

"A who's who of science's next generation. ... A captivating collection of essays ... a medley of big ideas ... a fascinating foray into the future."
— New Scientist

[2008]



"Compelling"
"Stellar"
"Important"

[2006]

"Irresistible"
"Excellent"
"Fascinating"


[2006]

"Incisive"
"Deeply passionate"
"Engaging"

[2004]

"Intriguing"
"Engrossing"
"Invigorating"


[1994]

(Click here for complete online text)

"Rousing"
"Astonishing"
"Bloodthirsty"

[2000]

"Dazzling"
"Wondrous"
"Outstanding"


[2002]


"Provocative"
"Captivating"
"Mind-stretching"

"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

[Continue to Edge Video]
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