Once a year self-styled head of the Third Culture movement and New York literary agent John Brockman asks his fellow thinkers and clients a question, who publishes their answers every New Year’s Day in his online forum edge.org . Thus Mr. Brockman fulfills the promise that is the basic principle of Third Culture. The sciences are asking mankind’s relevant questions he says, while the humanities busy themselves with ideological skirmishes and semantic hairsplitting. That’s why he called a collection of essays by Third Culture luminaries “The New Humanists”.
Marvin Minsky, John Brockman, Daniel C. Dennett
It is about having last words of course, which have never been as embattled as in the current context of post-ideological debates and de-secularization. That’s why this year’s question ‚What is your dangerous idea’ seemed unusually loaded. Since it’s inception in 1998 the forum had mainly dealt with the basic questions of science culture per se. But maybe that’s why this year the debate has brought out the main concerns of Third Culture more direct than in the years before.
The list of participants is impressive - there are answers by 117 stellar thinkers like Stewart Brand, Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Jared Diamond, Freeman Dyson, Ray Kurzweil, Jaron Lanier, Steven Pinker, Douglas Rushkoff and Craig Venter. And they definitely don't agree. Despite the heated debate – Brockman keeps edge.org away from politics and punditry. “Others can do that better than us”, he says. Edge is thoroughly edited though. “We’re not a chatroom and not some Wikipedia”, Brockman states. There are very clear rules about topics and form. That’s why this year he had to intervene editorially more than usual. “20 people introduced a line by George Bush, that were edited out. But look at the times we’re in and you can understand why.”
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Read the answers to the Question of the Year
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Stewart Brand also posited a number of controversial ideas for environmentalists in a May 2005 Technology Review article. This included a re-consideration of nuclear power. He has also recently endorsed a novel about the American nuclear power industry written by a longtime nuclear engineer that's designed to give the general public a clear picture of how a US nuclear plant is operated (warts and all) and how an accident might be handled. This book is available at no cost on the net. See http://RadDecision.blogspot.com.
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