Edge in the News: 1999

Now that AOL's mass-market muscle has taken over the online world, it's easy to forget that the Net has long been a forum for intellectuals to exchange ideas. The problem is that many of these ideas are debated on exclusive, invitation-only mailing lists. But on Edge, the brainchild of New York literary agent John Brockman, the musings of some of the world's most prominent academics, artists and scientists‹on topics as varied as genetics and affirmative action‹are available to anyone. Getting on the list can be tough (you have to know Brockman), but mere mortals can access edited archives of his high-minded monthly e-mail newsletter at Edge's website.

Brockman launched the Edge list in 1996 as an online incarnation of the Reality Club, a group of intellectuals who began meeting in 1981 in real-world salons. "I started the Reality Club because it's almost impossible to sit down in New York and think deeply," says Brockman. "This is a market town‹it's hard to get a group together to focus on serious works." Now Brockman gathers minds from around the world for online discussions and writings about such topics as relativity theory and Plato. In Edge's 52 monthly editions thus far, surfers can find, for example, transcripts of lectures given by Darwinian theorist Richard Dawkins and interviews with MIT computer scientist Marvin Minsky and musician Brian Eno.

Probably the most stimulating and attention-grabbing content has resulted from the site's periodical posing of portentous philosophical questions. In a recent edition from January, Brockman asked his mailing-list members to identify the most important invention of the past 2,000 years. Among the responses were the eraser ("because it allows us to go back and fix our mistakes," according to Ecstasy Club author Douglas Rushkoff), the clock ("It converted time from a personal experience into a reality independent of perception," writes Disney Imagineer Danny Hillis) and Copernican Theory ("It took a lot of intellectual courage and taught us more than just what it said," writes the Monkees' Michael Nesmith). Such answers, along with 600-odd postings on the same topic from visitors to Edge's discussion area (run separately by New York-based e-zine Feed at www.feedmag.com), prove that shopping and fucking are hardly the only reasons people go online.

Brockman started Edge in response to the notion of the "third culture," an idea described by C.P. Snow in his 1959 book The Two Cultures. Snow identified two types of intellectual cultures: literary and scientific. In the future, Snow posited, members of these groups would come together and form a third culture to disseminate intellectual concepts to the public. According to Brockman, however, the third culture that has emerged is more the result of scientists' becoming increasingly literate. "The literary world, which hijacked the word intellectual, has been brain-dead for 30 years. Now it's the scientists who are asking the big questions," says Brockman, citing the success of Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, a book about string theory that hit No. 1 on Amazon.com's best-seller chart this past February.

Although it covers weighty scientific issues and has a recipient list that reads like a who's who of the digerati (including Bill Gates andVersion 2.0's Esther Dyson), Edge is remarkably low-tech and text-based. The irony of this is not lost on Brockman. "[Even though I'm] someone who has been pushing the envelope for digital communication, I keep coming back to books," he says. "The power of the printed word is amazing."

Why the elite mailing lists? Brockman chalks it up to lack of manpower. "I try to do everything myself," he says. "If I started to read a bunch of [unsolicited] e-mails, then I wouldn't have time to do Edge." And since the site's content is available for free, the greater public doesn't really miss out. According to Feed founder Steven Johnson, in some cases, the clearly focused discourse of closed lists can be preferable to the sometimes incoherent and rambling nature of open forums.

Whether or not Edge visitors decide to chat intelligently about issues on Feed won't change the distinctive content of Brockman's salon. Visitors are guaranteed a look into the minds and theories of people who make a living lecturing around the world and writing books. And for the intellectually curious who don't have the time or money to attend thought-provoking symposia and conferences, Edge is easy on the wallet. At least Brockman thinks so. "I think I've created the best graduate school in the world," he says.

The Edge 
www.edge.org A terrific, thought-provoking site put together by John Brockman and friends.

Edge is the electronic iteration of the Reality Club which started in 1980, which in a sense formalized what I did at these dinners. It celebrates thinking smart versus the anesthesiology of wisdom.

[FROM THE EDITORS]: "The editor and literary agent John Brockman recently challenged the salon of scientists that he hosts on his EDGE Web site by asking, "What is the most important invention in the past two thousand years?" Luckily, my job buys me admission to that on-line gathering and the chance to kibitz with the professionals." .....
— John Rennie, EDITOR IN CHIEF

Edge hits the front page of Japan's leading newspaper

"What is the greatest invention (innovation) man has ever made? Democracy? Mozart? A U.S. writer posed a question — "What is the most important invention/innovation made in the last 2,000 years?", and more than a hundred renowned US and European natural scientists, including Novel prize winners, started an argument on the Internet. Their responses included "reading glasses for the elderly", or "the eraser". And the arguments continue."

Recently, the author and literary agent John Brockman posed the question, "What is the most important invention in the past 2000 years?" He received thoughtful and often surprising answers from more than 100 leading thinkers, a fascinating survey of intellectual and creative wonders of the world.....The entire list of nominated inventions is posted on the Internet at www.edge.org. Reading them reminds me of how wondrous our world is.

That question was presented on Thanksgiving Day to Nobel laureates and other heavy thinkers by New York author and literary agent John Brockman. Brockman, who presides over an eclectic gathering of scientists and science buffs, started publishing the answers this week on the group's Web site. More than 100 participants have taken the bait so far, and their answers are as varied, and in some cases as strange, as the participants themselves.....This is not a group that accepts limitations gladly. Some fudged on the dates. Some eschewed the notion of an invention as some sort of gadget, opting instead for such things as the development of the scientific method, mathematics or some religions.

Could one inspire German scientists for such a brainstorming? Hardly. In German it is already difficult to find a good translation for this neural activity, leading to fantasy an fun. Brainstorming: "procedure to find the best solution of a problem by collecting spontaneous incidents (of the coworkers)", torments itself the Duden, the leading German dictionary. You can imagine the result.

Admitted, the "Hirngestuerm" (literally for brainstorming) does not supply necessarily serious results. But it provides a lot of fun - for English and American scientists often reason enough to take part in it. This applies also to the debates, which are taking place in the Internet-salon of literary agent John Brockman. On his web page Edge, the representatives of the so called "third culture" meet: Mostly scientists (and few philosophers), who are not only concerned with providing pure facts, but also search for deeper insight and the meaning of it all. For John Brockman, who is selling the rights for their popular scientific books, these researchers reveal already the " deeper meaning of our life", by redefining ", who and which we are ".

That question was presented on Thanksgiving Day to Nobel laureates and other heavy thinkers by New York author and literary agent John Brockman. Brockman, who presides over an eclectic gathering of scientists and science buffs, started publishing the answers this week on the group's Web site. More than 100 participants have taken the bait so far, and their answers are as varied, and in some cases as strange, as the participants themselves.....This is not a group that accepts limitations gladly. Some fudged on the dates. Some eschewed the notion of an invention as some sort of gadget, opting instead for such things as the development of the scientific method, mathematics or some religions.