# Edge 2003 Full Quotation Curation This is a source-first local curation of the complete Edge Annual Question response cohort, *WHAT ARE THE PRESSING SCIENTIFIC ISSUES FOR THE NATION AND THE WORLD, AND WHAT IS YOUR ADVICE ON HOW I CAN BEGIN TO DEAL WITH THEM? - GWB*. It preserves every response row exposed by the aggregate archive as an indexed provenance object with contributor identity, response title, credentials when supplied by Edge, an exact representative extract, and its direct response page when the archive exposes one. It is a curation record rather than a claim that every extract has been promoted into Simple Reminders. - **Annual Question:** [WHAT ARE THE PRESSING SCIENTIFIC ISSUES FOR THE NATION AND THE WORLD, AND WHAT IS YOUR ADVICE ON HOW I CAN BEGIN TO DEAL WITH THEM? - GWB](https://www.edge.org/annual-question/what-are-the-pressing-scientific-issues-for-the-nation-and-the-world-and-what-is) - **Aggregate response archive:** [View all responses](https://www.edge.org/responses/what-are-the-pressing-scientific-issues-for-the-nation-and-the-world-and-what-is) - **Archive year:** 2003 - **Response rows represented:** 93 - **Rows with substantive textual extracts:** 93 - **Rows without a substantive extract:** 0 - **Institutional router:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] - **Promoted archive entries:** 0 - **Canonical reminder files linked:** 0 - **Not yet promoted:** 93 ## Editorial and provenance boundaries 1. Every extract below is copied from the downloaded Edge aggregate response archive and whitespace-normalized without changing its words. 2. The extract is representative, not a substitute for the full response; the linked response or aggregate page remains the provenance object. 3. Hypotheses, predictions, questions, provocations, and contested positions remain the contributor's claims rather than established facts. 4. Promotion into `reminders/` requires a separate standalone-passage, headline, category, source, routing, and reciprocal-link review. 5. This file records the entire archive cohort even when a response is outside the present consciousness-continuity and machine-succession trajectories. ## Complete response index ### EDGE2003-001 — Mathematician — Keith Devlin > Let me stress that this figure is not based on comparing apples and oranges, as some previous airline safety studies have done. By being based on the lengths of journeys, those previous studies made airline travel appear safer than it really is. The figure I have given you is based on the computed risk to a single individual. It compares the risks we face, for the journey we are about to take, when any one of us decides whether to board a plane or step into our car. In other words, "How likely am I to die on this trip?" - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Mathematician; Executive Director, H-STAR Institute, Stanford; Author, Finding Fibonacci - **Extract length:** 100 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Mathematician](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11926) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-002 — Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University — John Mccarthy > Now here's my warning; it may be unnecessary. The scientific community, worldwide as well as in America, is like other communities and given to fads and taboos. These taboos have prevented some subjects from being researched or even discussed. These subjects include the genetics of behavior and intelligence. When a program fails, the possibility that genetic differences are involved is not allowed to be mentioned. Another taboo in the scientific community that studies energy is nuclear energy. Nuclear energy provides the one guarantee that those aspects of American society that depend on high use of energy including personal mobility can be sustained indefinitely, i.e. beyond the supply of oil - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University - **Extract length:** 109 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence` - **Source:** [Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11941) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-003 — Associate Professor, Department of Psychology at New York University — Gary Marcus > Stem cells are so important because they hold the key to life itself. Everything about the human condition—from the heartbeat or a smile of a newborn baby to the ability of our bodies to fight off disease—follows from the choices of individual cells in growing organisms. Embryonic stem cells burst with potential, therapeutically and scientifically; they truly can become anything. The researchers who master their secrets will be able to use them to repair damaged hearts, build vastly better drugs, and even regenerate damaged brain tissue and heal fractured minds. They will also be able to use those secrets to figure out what makes the human brain special, and in so doing open the door to new kinds of tools for education, probably not yet even dreamt of. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Psychology, Director NYU Center for Language and Music; Author, Guitar Zero - **Extract length:** 128 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation` - **Source:** [Associate Professor, Department of Psychology at New York University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11957) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-004 — Web Pioneer Video gaming consultant Founder and author of Justin's Links — Justin Hall > Over 60% of Korean homes have broadband Internet access. Massively multiplayer online role-playing games are immensely popular there; increasing numbers of people spend hours each night fighting monsters together online. The largest Korean textbook distributor Daekyo and an independent software design firm JMCJ (Interesting & Creative Co., Ltd.) have joined forces to make a massively multiplayer online role-playing game in which children can study math, science and history: Demiurges. These people intend to make it possible for people to play in a virtual world saturated with real-world knowledge. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** a Web pioneer, a video gaming consultant, and founder and author of Justin's Links. - **Extract length:** 88 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Web Pioneer Video gaming consultant Founder and author of Justin's Links](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11961) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-005 — Physicist, Matthews Distinguished University, Professor Northeastern University — John Swain and Stephen Reucroft > Science is the nemesis of ignorance, and ignorance is our single biggest enemy. Ignorance has been attacking us for ages and it is so ever present that we often forget that it's there. Broad-based support for science, and the public awareness and appreciation of it, are essential if we are to have a future. There is no single overwhelmingly pressing sub field or sub-issue. We need it all, we need it now, and we need everyone to understand it as deeply as possible. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** physicist at Northeastern | Matthews Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern University. - **Extract length:** 83 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Physicist, Matthews Distinguished University, Professor Northeastern University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11976) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-006 — Professor of Cognitive Science University of California, Irvine — Donald D. Hoffman > The mystery is us. What kind of creatures are we? Are we composites of physical bodies and nonphysical experiences? Or are we entirely physical, or entirely nonphysical? Do brains create conscious experiences, or vice versa? Could some complex pattern of neural activity in my brain actually cause, or be identical with, my experience of red? How, precisely? Is the distinction between physical and nonphysical even useful here? - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Cognitive Scientist, UC, Irvine; Author, The Case Against Reality - **Extract length:** 67 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting` - **Source:** [Professor of Cognitive Science University of California, Irvine](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11727) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-007 — Geoarchaeologist — Eberhard Zangger > Getting rid of the old-fashioned universities would make room for a new system that could operate similar to Montesquieu's scheme of divided powers in politics (Executive, Legislative, Judicial) to prevent misuse of power. A tri-partite control of powers in academia could consist of research in think tank-equivalent institutions, education in colleges, and administration of quality, funds, jobs, permits, awards and the like in separate institutions. Scientists would only work in one of these units at a time. Early on in their careers, they would be researchers, then teachers and finally administrators—instead of being all at the same time, as it is often the case today. Funding would be provided individually, mainly on the basis of track record and persuasiveness of ideas. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Managing director of science communications - **Extract length:** 121 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Geoarchaeologist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11895) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-008 — CEO, Biophan Technologies, Inc. — Mike Weiner > There is an opportunity to improve the quest for cures for many diseases, including cancers, by increasing the instrumentation budget for advanced detection of physical properties of the genome, such as being able to view the conformal shape of DNA in live cells as it twists and turns, winds and unwinds, achieving 5500:1 rates of compression in size, knowing when to unwind and transcribe, photon and EMF emission by DNA in cells in vivo and in vitro, which we have no way to measure today; etc. Included in this proposed initiative should be the involvement of more physicists to aid molecular biologists in their interpretation of the state of activity, including quantum mechanics, at work in the nanoworld of live cells. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** CEO of Biophan Technologies, Inc. - **Extract length:** 121 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [CEO, Biophan Technologies, Inc.](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11574) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-009 — Professor of Physics University of California, Santa Barbara — Steve Giddings > • Initiate programs to bring more scientific knowledge to our decision makers: Congress and other administration officials. We should have annual meetings in which leading scientists are invited to brief our leaders on the implications, perils, and promises of scientific discoveries. Congress, and all of your administration, should, on an ongoing basis, actively seek the advice of scientists, both in confronting crises, and in planning for a better future for the American people. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Theoretical Physicist; Professor, Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara - **Extract length:** 73 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Professor of Physics University of California, Santa Barbara](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11743) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-010 — Neuroscientist — Steven R. Quartz > Studies of our biological constitution make it increasingly clear that we are social creatures of meaning, who crave a sense of coherence and purpose. Yet, our modern way of life seems to provide fewer and fewer opportunities to engage in the group life that satisfies these human needs—indeed, many of its structures and institutions stunts these very needs. In addition to these obstacles within the design of modern life, it's my hunch that modernist culture is based on a profoundly mistaken view of human needs. The upshot is a deeply flawed view of human happiness as the private pursuit of self actualization. The implications are profound, and range from an enormous cost in public health terms to more and more social conflicts, terrorism being just one manifestation of these. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Neuroscientist; Professor of Philosophy, Caltech; Co-author, Cool - **Extract length:** 129 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting` - **Source:** [Neuroscientist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11911) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-011 — Director Emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory — Leon M. Lederman > You may recall that we met at the White House during your reception for U.S Nobel Laureates. My award was in Physics (1988) and we had a brief discussion of neutrinos and our ever more incisive story of the creation and evolution of the Universe and how the deep connections of the outer space of cosmology and the inner space of particle physics are joined to illuminate the history and structure of the physical universe. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory - **Extract length:** 75 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Director Emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11590) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-012 — Independent Writer and Strategist — Lance Knobel > Your friend Tony Blair recently gave a speech where he declared, "We're at a crossroads. We could choose a path of timidity in the face of the unknown. Or we could choose to be a nation at ease with radical knowledge, not fearful of the future, a culture that values a pragmatic, evidence-based approach to new opportunities." Prime Minister Blair believes the second path is the clear choice. It's time you demonstrated the same conviction. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Independent Writer and Strategist - **Extract length:** 75 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Independent Writer and Strategist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11758) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-013 — Professor of Electrical Engineering University of Southern California — Bart Kosko > There isn't time to train or retrain our scientists and engineers and physicians (and lawyers) in probability and statistics. Nor would it be either cost effective or polite to require that at least once each grant applicant submit her answers from a proctored multiple-choice exam on basic statistics when she submits her grant proposal to a federal funding agency—even though state governments periodically do require just such test results to renew a driver's license. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Information Scientist and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Law, University of Southern California; Author, Noise, Fuzzy Thinking - **Extract length:** 74 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Professor of Electrical Engineering University of Southern California](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11605) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-014 — Astrophysicist, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton — Piet Hut > Even if we are lucky, and no life-threatening asteroid crosses our path in the foreseeable future, developing the technology to gently nudge asteroids is likely to help us to explore the solar system. Plasma engines, for example, can be used as tug boats for asteroids but also to speed up human expansion into space. This could be a major legacy of your administration: to open the door to populating other worlds while at the same time making our own world a safer place. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** professor of astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton - **Extract length:** 83 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Astrophysicist, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11773) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-015 — Founder and editor-in-Chief of SEED (Science has never looked so good) — Adam Bly > In times where the most important issues facing your administration, and indeed the nation, are science-centric—from the search for biological weapons in Iraq to human cloning, from global warming to smallpox vaccinations—the voice of the President's chief science advisor must be more pronounced; the public needs to see and hear a stronger scientific presence in the West Wing. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Head of Advanced Analytics, Spotify - **Extract length:** 58 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting` - **Source:** [Founder and editor-in-Chief of SEED (Science has never looked so good)](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11620) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-016 — Department of Anthropology University College, London — Robert Aunger > Culture is what we have that other creatures don't. However, as we have learned more about other animals, the number of features unique to our way of life has diminished considerably. For example, we used to think that no other animal learned an idiosyncratic way of performing some behavior that makes their group characteristically different from other groups—what anthropologists call "cultural traditions." Now we know that chimps—and probably a number of dolphin and whale species—do have socially acquired traditions. So we can no longer say that such traditions are unique to us. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Biological Anthropologist; Author, Gaining Control - **Extract length:** 92 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Department of Anthropology University College, London](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11788) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-017 — Professor of Psychiatry, Professor of Psychology — Randolph Nesse > You can change this, and science can help. We are coming to new explanations of how relationships work. Trading favors is only the beginning; a reputation for fulfilling commitments is equally important. Your current policies demonstrate that you understand the importance of convincing others that we will fulfill military commitments even when they are not in our direct interests. There is also power in fulfilling commitments to help others even when no benefit is expected. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Research Professor of Life Sciences, Director (2014-2019), Center for Evolution and Medicine, Arizona State University; Author, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings - **Extract length:** 75 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Professor of Psychiatry, Professor of Psychology](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11635) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-018 — Archaeologist and Journalist — Christine Finn > For the past eight years I have taught a course on Archaeology and Anthropology to American High School students. These young people are juggling their own rites of passage into adulthood with the external demands of an increasingly challenging world. They don't talk readily about what happened in their grandmother's day, or what their parents grew up with. They can see more relevance in discussing what their older siblings used at school. Last year's model is the new archaeology. I encourage them to think about the evolution of the computer over a few decades as if considering stone tool technology over millenia. It's not change that is significant, it's the rate of change, and that's a tricky concept to convey to students who have never used a pen to write an essay. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Archaeologist; Journalist; Author, Artifacts, Past Poetic - **Extract length:** 132 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Archaeologist and Journalist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11804) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-019 — Computational Neuroscientist — Terrence J. Sejnowski > The discovery that DNA carries the genetic code for cells opened a new era in biology that focused on the organization of information in cells. Soon we will know all the genes in cells from humans and many other species and high throughput methods are available to identify proteins and to analyze their three dimensional structures. However, the sequence of a genome only provides the equivalent of nature's white pages, a useful index of genes but far less than we need in order to know how cells work. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Computational Neuroscientist; Francis Crick Professor, the Salk Institute; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Co-author (with Patricia Churchland), The Computational Brain - **Extract length:** 88 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Computational Neuroscientist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11651) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-020 — Professor of Psychology University of Texas at Austin — David M. Buss > One scientific issue that requires immediate attention is this: Understanding the psychological circuits that motivate people to murder. The impact of killing cascades beyond the obvious tragedy of each prematurely terminated life. Each dead victim is also a son or a daughter, a brother or a sister, a father or a mother, so the lives of the victim's family shatter. Uncertain and unpredictable dangers promote contagious anxiety. The limited days of our lives become wasted when we seek to act, but lack the knowledge to detect and deter killers. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin; Author, When Men Behave Badly - **Extract length:** 89 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Professor of Psychology University of Texas at Austin](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11819) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-021 — Anthropologist — Mary Catherine Bateson > Mr. President, do continue to support research in neuroscience. We need to know more about the effects of love or trauma, of intellectual stimulation or monotony on the brain itself. Brain structure may increasingly be seen as a result rather than a cause. Keep the work going in human genetics and biochemistry. Doing science is after all derived from the evolved human capacity to adapt by learning and we can hope that some of the hubris will settle down with time. But put your money into research and policy for the great long term experiment of building a world in which everyone can learn to be the best they can be. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor Emerita, George Mason University; Visiting Scholar, Sloan Center on Aging & Work, Boston College; Author, Composing a Further Life - **Extract length:** 111 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation` - **Source:** [Anthropologist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11665) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-022 — Assistant Professor (of Medicine; Family and Preventive Medicine; and Psychology) at UCSD — Beatrice Golomb > Conversely: Some microorganisms contribute to host health and defense. There is need to focus on studying and mining the benefits of beneficial organisms, as well as attending to those that produce harm. (Thus, there is evidence of altered gut "flora", i.e. altered balance of bacteria and fungi, in persons with irritable bowel syndrome; there is evidence that some "intestinal flora" are vital to gut function and nutrient absorption, and protect against invasion of pathogenic organisms; there is evidence that H. pylori, a bacterium that may contribute to gastroesophageal reflux, may also protect against esophageal cancer; - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Medicine at UCSD - **Extract length:** 95 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Assistant Professor (of Medicine; Family and Preventive Medicine; and Psychology) at UCSD](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11834) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-023 — Actor, Director, Writer Host of PBS program — Alan Alda > "We live in a time when massive means of destruction are right here in our hands. We're probably the first species capable of doing this much damage to our planet. We can make the birds stop singing; we can still the fish and make the insects fall from the trees like black rain. And ironically we've been brought here by reason, by rationality. We cannot afford to live in a culture that doesn't use the power in its hands with the kind of rationality that produced it in the first place." - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Actor; Writer; Director; Host, PBS program Brains on Trial; Author, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself - **Extract length:** 91 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Actor, Director, Writer Host of PBS program](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11681) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-024 — Biologist — Rupert Sheldrake > What questions capable of being answered by scientific research are in fact of interest to the electorate? The simplest way to find out would be to ask for suggestions. Some would come from individuals, through the Center's Web site. Some would come from local groups, like sports clubs and horticultural associations; from national societies like the National Audubon Society and the Sierra Club; from voluntary organizations like Narcotics Anonymous; from consumer protection organizations; and from local governments, schools, churches and trades unions. Potential subjects for research could be discussed in newspapers and magazines, and on radio and television. To find out in more detail what subject areas are of significant public concern, market research and opinion polls would probably be helpful. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** biologist and author - **Extract length:** 121 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Biologist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11850) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-025 — Technology journalist, designer of online news systems — Cliff Barney > Therefore I urge you to appoint a social scientist, preferably a sociologist who has studied the impact of science on society, as your science advisor. More specifically, since a global networked economy and global political issues (such as terrorism) are affecting the entire planet, I suggest that you choose someone who has investigated the new social forms that are developing to cope with the global communications network. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Former Journalist - **Extract length:** 67 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Technology journalist, designer of online news systems](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11696) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-026 — Author of The Sand Dollar & the Slide Rule, The Leakey Family, and The Hominid Gang. — Delta Willis > For the moment let's call this phase one Reinventing the Wheel. In reality, we're reintroducing the bicycle, along with Green Lanes, to combat urban sprawl. Lance Armstrong might be involved to give the project broad appeal, although there's hardly a town or city unaffected by this in the U.S. Problems include loss of farmland, global warming from increased traffic, loss of wilderness and wetland habitat, death of downtowns, and voters stressed out by longer commutes. Americans are becoming increasingly obese, partly from lack of exercise, yet it's inconvenient and dangerous to walk in many US cities. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Paleontologist; Author, Hominid Gang - **Extract length:** 96 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Author of The Sand Dollar & the Slide Rule, The Leakey Family, and The Hominid Gang.](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11865) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-027 — Author, Lecturer, and Social Theorist — Douglas Rushkoff > A modest super-fund to explore alternative, non-resource-based energy sources could solve a great majority of the world's problems. But it would need to be accompanied by an equally serious look at our commodities-based economic model. Our chief obstacle to sustainable energy technology might not be scientific at all, but economic. What would happen to the oil industry if we no longer needed oil? - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Media Analyst; Documentary Writer; Author, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus - **Extract length:** 63 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Author, Lecturer, and Social Theorist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11712) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-028 — Research Staff member, IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center — Clifford Pickover > With on-demand matter, humanity will be able to create ecologically friendly industries that produce low-cost and exceptional products. OM can be used to create novel sensors, computing devices, space vehicles, windows, protective clothing, medical prostheses, rooftops, auto parts, and a host of on-demand materials with limitless potential. With just a voice command, your toothbrush becomes a supercomputer, or your umbrella changes to a material that could never be available by other means. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Author, The Math Book, The Physics Book, and The Medical Book trilogy - **Extract length:** 72 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting` - **Source:** [Research Staff member, IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11880) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-029 — Archeologist, FSA Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and a member of CIFA (Centre for International Forensic Assistance) — Timothy Taylor > By rethinking the nature of apparent 'burials'—a process that involved absolutely no experimentation or new excavation at all, but which nevertheless took up several years thinking time—I have recently suggested that what early humans were up to was very different to what we hitherto thought, and that the birth of religion and the emergence of social cohesion was rooted in atavistic practices of human sacrifice and ceremonial cannibalism. The ostensible 'burials' that archaeologists have dated to the period of the last Ice Age are in fact the remains of elaborate, communally-approved ritual murders. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Jan Eisner Professor of Archaeology, Comenius University in Bratislava; Author, The Artificial Ape - **Extract length:** 93 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Archeologist, FSA Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and a member of CIFA (Centre for International Forensic Assistance)](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11560) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-030 — Psychologist — Daniel Goleman > Of course, gathering the required data poses a formidable task. It can begin modestly, focusing on the easier dimensions of information. But ultimately filling in the missing links could require a Manhattan Project-like intensity of research, that would draw on findings from fields as diverse as industrial engineering and sociology, environmental sciences and economics, biochemistry and systems theory. It might also require the creation of an impartial body to gather and vet the data—something like a mega-Consumer Reports. Perhaps a new cabinet post for transparency, Mr. President? - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Psychologist; Author (with Richard Davidson), Altered Traits - **Extract length:** 87 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Psychologist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11244) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-031 — Psychologist Bristol, England — Susan Blackmore > Our prisons will have room to spare. No one will be there for wanting the freedom to control their own mind. And no one will be there because gangs have lured or threatened them into a life of dealing and violence. Police will once more earn the respect of the majority whose lives they work to protect. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Psychologist; Visiting Professor, University of Plymouth; Author, Consciousness: An Introduction - **Extract length:** 57 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Psychologist Bristol, England](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11413) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-032 — TEDMed Conferences Architect, cartographer, creator of the Access Travel Guide Series — Richard Saul Wurman > Public information refers to everything that creates an informed citizen. Public means everything that we as a society agree should be available to the body politic. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Founder, TED Conference; EG Conference; TEDMED Conferences; Architect, Cartographer; Author, Information Architects - **Extract length:** 26 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [TEDMed Conferences Architect, cartographer, creator of the Access Travel Guide Series](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11259) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-033 — Professor of Ophthalmology and Neurobiology University of Irvine — Leo M. Chalupa > First, I predict that all the other applicants for this position will urge you to increase federal funding for science. Second, every applicant will make a special case for increased funding for the scientific field in which he or she specializes. The biologists will plead for more money for biomedical research, the physicists for particle research, and the psychologists for behavioral studies. This is not to belittle the worthiness of such advice. All branches of science can make good use of more funding, and who better to make a case for a particular field than an expert in that field. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Neurobiologist; Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology, George Washington University - **Extract length:** 100 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Professor of Ophthalmology and Neurobiology University of Irvine](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11428) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-034 — Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Cognitive Science Program Indiana University, Bloomington — Andy Clark > The level of productive debate and co-operation between the humanities and the sciences of the mind is also rising daily. At this critical historical moment, America can lead the world by taking the quality of human life seriously, and by devoting its impressive resources not to hopeless and misguided causes but to helping all its citizens lead full and rewarding lives. That means spending money on the kinds of education, training and research that will help us to understand ourselves as we are today, and to build better hybrid minds tomorrow. Such a project requires understanding both our biological roots and the socio-technological matrixes that take those roots and turn them into the hybrid intelligent systems we recognize as persons. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Cognitive Philosophy, Department of Philosophy and Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK; Author, Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind - **Extract length:** 120 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting` - **Source:** [Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Cognitive Science Program Indiana University, Bloomington](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11274) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-035 — Professor of Computer Science Brandeis University — Jordan Pollack > Optimists behave different than pessimists. They buy more, invest more, take risk for future gains, and work harder. One doesn't have to be a genius to realize that the threat of continual war, while enhancing power, leads to economic woes because investors and consumers are uncertain. While oil profits may rise, all the rest of our modern industries, from Airlines, to Investment Banking, Telecommunications, Software and Chips will continue to collapse. To end the depression, the country needs optimism about economic growth driven by expectations of peace and stability. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor and Chairman of Computer Science, Brandeis University - **Extract length:** 89 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values`, `machine_intelligence`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Professor of Computer Science Brandeis University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11442) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-036 — Freelance science journalist (Scientific American, the New York Times, the Washington Post, among others) — John Horgan > Fields such as evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science are now providing new insights into the brain, emotions, reasoning and the evolution of human nature. Findings from these fields as well as from economics, game theory, anthropology, and political science can help us to understand the causes of war and find ways to reduce its occurrence. Thus far, however, the scientific community has not given war-related questions the serious, sustained attention that they deserve. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Director, Center for Science Writings, Stevens Institute of Technology - **Extract length:** 74 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Freelance science journalist (Scientific American, the New York Times, the Washington Post, among others)](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11288) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-037 — John Dirk Werkman Professor of Psychology Hope College — David G. Myers > • Fourth, we fear what is most readily available in memory. Horrific images of United Flight 175 slicing into the World Trade Center, form indelible memories. And availability in memory provides our intuitive rule for judging risks. Thousands of safe car trips (for those who have survived to read this) have largely extinguished our anxieties about driving. A thousand massively publicized anthrax victims would similarly rivet our attention more than yet another 20,000+ annual U.S. influenza fatalities, or another 30,000+ annual gun deaths. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Psychology, Hope College; Co-author, Psychology, 11th Edition - **Extract length:** 83 words - **Trajectory signals:** `memory_and_persistence` - **Source:** [John Dirk Werkman Professor of Psychology Hope College](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11457) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-038 — Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science — Roger Schank > • 1) Begin to help change our education policy to create students who prepare for the real world they will inhabit by learning how to wire their houses instead of quoting Ohm's law or how and when to refinance their house rather than learning Euclidean Geometry. I would create more curricula in science and other subjects that emphasized everyday reasoning issues like the use of stem cells or waste cleanup or snow removal or alternative energy sources. Why can't science be about real issues in real people's lives? I'll bet you didn't take a single science course at Yale. Who could blame you? I was a member of the Yale faculty for many years. The science professors are preparing future scientists not future Presidents. The nation suffers as a result. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** CEO, Socratic Arts Inc.; John Evans Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, Psychology and Education, Northwestern University; Author, Make School Meaningful-And Fun! - **Extract length:** 130 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11303) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-039 — Neuroscientist — Ernst Pöppel > Let me use a picture from physics. Stability is only given if an object rests on three legs. This is also true in global politics. A longterm balance is given if three large blocks develop and maintain their identity. This is of course the US, but which is also East Asia (in particular China), and Europe (in spite of some present hesitations to see its identity and its global mission). In a world of three large areas of cultural identity, i.e. US, East Asia and Europe, each one of equal importance and expressing respect to the others, we can hope for longterm stability. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Head of Research Group Systems, Neuroscience and Cognitive Research, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany; Guest Professor, Peking University, China - **Extract length:** 103 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity` - **Source:** [Neuroscientist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11472) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-040 — Professor of Psychology — Alison Gopnik > Like many of your other prospective science advisors I would like to urge you to provide more support for basic scientific research. But I would especially urge more support for the most productive, and most underfunded, scientific community in the country. This group of scientists and science educators do more to provide the basic intellectual infrastructure of the nation than any other. Every year they make fundamental discoveries in physics, biology, mathematics, and psychology, as well as ensuring that the discoveries of previous generations of scientists are transmitted to the scientists of the future. Yet they typically receive salaries somewhere between zero and $15,000.00 a year, and 20% are below the poverty line. Most of the science educators in this group actually make major financial sacrifices to do their fundamentally important work. They receive less federal and state support than any other part of the scientific community, no grants, no scholarships, no R and D write-offs, less even than public elementary schools or community colleges. In fact, both your administration and the preceding one have actually cut the small amount of funding that was once earmarked for this group. These unsung geniuses, are, of course, children under five and the many women (and a few men) who take care of them. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Psychologist, UC, Berkeley; Author, The Gardener and the Carpenter - **Extract length:** 211 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Professor of Psychology](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11153) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-041 — Faculty, Harvard Medical School/Harvard Mind Brain Behavior Initiative Clinical Associate in Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital — Nancy Etcoff > I would recommend the creation of a new institute—The National Institute for Humanism—that would fund research and programs that address pressing national problems in a radically new way, by ignoring traditional dividing lines and disciplines. The Institute would create a mechanism to bridge the worlds of the arts and sciences, worlds that have often acted unheeding of the other, or worse, mistrustful or hostile to one another and in competition for the intellectual center. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Psychologist and faculty member of the Harvard Medical School and of Harvard University - **Extract length:** 74 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation` - **Source:** [Faculty, Harvard Medical School/Harvard Mind Brain Behavior Initiative Clinical Associate in Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11318) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-042 — Professor of Physics Harvard University — Lisa Randall > I am pleased you are considering me for this advisory position. However, before proceeding further, I would appreciate some clarification about your vision for my role in your administration. Particularly in these tumultuous times, I would like to know that you will not neglect the advice of the scientific community. Since you have moved my predecessor's office away from the White House and downgraded his role, refusing to give him the customary title "Assistant to the President," I cannot help but question your commitment to furthering and best utilizing scientific advances. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Physicist, Harvard University; Author, Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs - **Extract length:** 91 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Professor of Physics Harvard University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11487) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-043 — Professor of Psychology — Unattributed Edge contributor > Each year, our government spends millions, if not billions of dollars on problems concerning violence, drug abuse, gambling, smoking, and eating disorders. Although these problems appear different on the surface, they reflect a common underlying theme: overcoming temptation in the face of weak systems of control. Over the last decade, studies in cognitive neuroscience and genetics have begun to pinpoint areas in the brain that are involved in reward, conflict monitoring, and control, as well as gene sequences that may put some people at greater risk than others with respect to overcoming problems of control. To illustrate the importance of these findings for the health of our nation, consider the following frightening fact: the best predictor, internationally, of the level of violence within a nation is the proportion of young men in the population. Men are more violent than women in all cultures. Although cultures can shift the level of violence, the sex difference remains. Men are more heavily involved in risk taking. We now know that a significant correlate of violence in humans, both men and women, is the level of circulating serotonin—a key neurochemical in the brain. When serotonin levels are low, the level of control is lower; low serotonin levels are associated with greater impulsivity, more risk taking. We are only beginning to understand what determines and changes levels of serotonin in the brain. One thing is certain: the key lies in understanding what happens in development. A recent study illustrates this point, and shows why science must interface with policy. Genetic analyses have revealed that a particular form of one gene causes differential expression of an enzyme. This enzyme plays a critical role in the production of serotonin. In a study of several hundred young boys, results revealed that when this gene produces a low level of the target enzyme, such children are far more vulnerable to physical abuse by parents than in children with a high level of the enzyme. In particular, boys who were targets of severe parental aggression were much more likely to shows signs of antisocial personality disorder if the level of the enzyme was low than if it was high. Parental aggression should not be tolerated under any circumstance. But what this study reveals is that we are not equally vulnerable to aggression. As our understanding of genetics and neuroscience increase, we will be able to use this information to better plan programs for intervention. Ultimately, this interplay between molecular genetics and neurobiology on the one hand, and social work on the other hand, should lead to a reduction in overall levels of violence as we can perhaps begin to target the source in development as opposed to the consequences in adulthood. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Extract length:** 451 words - **Trajectory signals:** `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `governance_control_and_values`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Professor of Psychology](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11168) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-044 — Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Professor of the History of Science, Emeritus, at Harvard University — Gerald Holton > No one can dispute any longer that when a Nation's science and technology weaken, the Nation itself is in danger—economically, militarily, intellectually, and in terms of its image and power as a world leader. Therefore it is essential to realize that behind the many pressing scientific issues facing our Nation today, one stands out far among the rest: The persistent decline for several years in the past, and into the foreseeable future, of the very health of the scientific/technological workforce of America. This decline—which, if not reversed, may well turn out to be the Achilles Heel in the battle for maintaining the historic high standing of American science and technology— has several indicators. I will here confine myself to two: - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Professor of the History of Science, Emeritus, Harvard University; Author, Einstein for the 21st Century: His Legacy in Science, Art, and Modern Culture - **Extract length:** 120 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Professor of the History of Science, Emeritus, at Harvard University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11333) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-045 — Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Ecology Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Science Duke University — Stuart Pimm > I've given much thought to present adminstration's policy on science particularly on evironmental issues (very broadly defined), but also on related areas (such as energy policy), and have even been involved in some of the issues involving terrorist threats (diseases of people and agricultural resources). I have yet to see an area where science has informed any of this present administration's policies. Despite much hand waving about "sound science" I have no confidence that a science advisor would have any useful impact whatsoever. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Ecology, Duke University; Author, The World According to Pimm: a Scientist Audits the Earth - **Extract length:** 83 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Ecology Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Science Duke University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11502) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-046 — Nobel Laureate — Eric R. Kandel > The first and most important issue at the edge is the biology underlying conscious experience, particularly the biology of self-awareness: How do you study it? Where is it located in the brain? How does it develop over time? - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Recipient, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2002; Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Columbia University; Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures - **Extract length:** 38 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation` - **Source:** [Nobel Laureate](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11183) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-047 — Psychologist — Judith Rich Harris > You see, in my view the source of the world's problems is people. It's people who make wars, commit crimes, mess up the environment, spend too much, spend too little, whatever. So in order to solve the world's problems, we need to understand people. The science of understanding people is called "psychology." But psychology isn't taken seriously, because most folks think they already understand people—who needs science? - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Independent Investigator and Theoretician; Author, The Nurture Assumption; No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality - **Extract length:** 67 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Psychologist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11350) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-048 — Professor of Economic Policy at the Chemical Institute of Ramon Llull University in Barcelona — Eduardo Punset > The unprecedented disappearance of barriers clashes with every social convention. Most people only feel comfortable within the narrow limits of his or her own identity, if duly ranged with equals from the same species, tribe, generation, church, country and culture. And identical cultures provide similar sight, taste, tact and hearing. That is the way the neocortex works. But the sudden lack of barriers tunes very well with the unconscious brain and its capacity to allucinate under the effects of LSD. The most powerful drug on earth happens to destroy barriers between people, between mind and body, between oneself and other living organisms and, finally, between the spirit and the Universe. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Scientist; Spanish Television Presenter; Author, The Happiness Trip - **Extract length:** 110 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Professor of Economic Policy at the Chemical Institute of Ramon Llull University in Barcelona](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11517) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-049 — Chairman, Foresight Institute — K. Eric Drexler > Research programs today are poorly focused on developing the molecular machine technologies essential to the strategic objective of molecular manufacturing. Researchers, steeped in late-20th-century culture, often see machinery as somehow archaic, left over from the 19th century, rather than recognizing it as the necessary foundation of technologies past, present, and future. The broad field of nanotechnology embraces a host of topics related to more fashionable academic topics, such as biotechnology, materials, and microelectronics. Interest in these topics has diverted resources into short-term efforts that are well worth doing—but not at the expense of neglecting core technologies essential to the long-term promise of nanotechnology. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Researcher; Policy Advocate; Author, Engines of Creation - **Extract length:** 103 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `machine_intelligence`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Chairman, Foresight Institute](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11198) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-050 — Schumacher College Dartington, Totnes, Devon, UK — Brian Goodwin > We have tried to substitute quantities for qualities and found that this produces poverty in the quality of our relationships, in the meaning and value of our lives. Science is now expanding so that qualities of persons, communities, cultures, ecosystems, landscapes, farms and animals, the Amazon, the planet , are primary, with a focus on health, creativity and meaning. A science of qualities is now developing in response to the recognised limitations of our science of quantities, to refocus our attention on the qualities and values of life. It's the path into the future. Why not take it? Then you'll go down in history not as Burning Bush but as Bush the Bringer of Universal Sustainability through Hydrogen. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Biology at Schumacher College - **Extract length:** 118 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Schumacher College Dartington, Totnes, Devon, UK](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11366) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-051 — Theoretical Physicist Founding member, Perimeter Institute in Waterloo Canada — Lee Smolin > Only the United States has the scientific capability, economic resources and technological base to mount programs to solve these problems. Only the United States has the experience of successfully carrying off such ambitious programs. Only the United States has the spirit of innovation and risk taking that makes such projects succeed. By taking on and solving these problems we would create enormous benefits to all the peoples of the world. There is indeed no better way to maintain our position of leadership in the eyes of the world. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Physicist, Perimeter Institute; Author, Einstein's Unfinished Revolution - **Extract length:** 88 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Theoretical Physicist Founding member, Perimeter Institute in Waterloo Canada](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11531) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-052 — Professor of Classics Provost Georgetown University — James J. O'Donnell > American science in the near half-century since has done wonderful things—but we train fewer scientists every year, we can't fill secondary school classrooms with trained science teachers, we cannot support the building of research facilities in our universities, and the mass media and the houses of congress are full of scientific illiterates. Scientific research will not fix all humankind's problems—but so far it has made us healthier, better fed, more prosperous, and better able to achieve the potential of human intelligence and human society than my grandfather's generation could have imagined. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Classics Scholar, University Librarian, ASU; Author, Pagans - **Extract length:** 91 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence` - **Source:** [Professor of Classics Provost Georgetown University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11213) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-053 — Public communicator in science — Karl Sabbagh > The most pressing scientific issue facing the nation and the world is the deep level of ignorance of science that exists among the vast majority of the world's population, civilized as well as uncivilized. This is manifest in two ways: 1. Lack of knowledge of even basic scientific discoveries about the world; and 2. Lack of appreciation of the effectiveness of scientific reasoning at arriving at the truth: what Eugene Wigner, one of the last century's leading scientists, called "the unreasonable effectiveness of science". - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Producer; Founder, Managing Director, Skyscraper Productions; Author, The Antisemitism Wars: How the British Media Failed Their Public - **Extract length:** 84 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Public communicator in science](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11382) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-054 — Cognitive Scientist — Rafael Núñez > The Infinite is one of the most intriguing ideas in which the human mind has ever engaged. Full of paradoxes and controversies, it has raised fundamental issues in domains as diverse as theology, physics, philosophy, literature, and art. Moreover (and strangely enough), the Infinite, elusive and counterintuitive, has played a central role in defining a fundamental field of human intellectual activity characterized by precision, certainty, objectivity, and effectiveness in modeling our real finite world: mathematics! - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor, Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego - **Extract length:** 75 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity` - **Source:** [Cognitive Scientist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11543) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-055 — Editor-in-Chief, Skeptic magazine — Michael Shermer > To address this serious problem we need to teach people that science is not simply a database of unconnected factoids, but a set of methods aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation. Science is a way of thinking that recognizes the need to test hypotheses so that the process is not reduced to mere opinion mongering, that the findings of such tests are provisional and probabilistic, and that natural explanations are always sought for natural phenomena. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Publisher, Skeptic magazine; Monthly Columnist, Scientific American; Presidential Fellow, Chapman University; Author, Heavens on Earth - **Extract length:** 82 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Editor-in-Chief, Skeptic magazine](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11228) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-056 — Cultural revolution correspondent, The Washington Post Principal, The Garreau Group — Joel Garreau > There are a variety of scenarios for such a future. One critical uncertainty is whether the technology is seen as benign or malignant. Another is whether society coheres during this transformation or bursts into shards. Some of the possible outcomes: The secrets of human consciousness and the human brain elude us, and the change is stately. Or incremental change continues to accelerate, aging is reversed, the revolution has occurred, and we are just trying to deal with the consequences. Another possibility: new intelligent species roam the Earth in 20 or 30 years, some of them mainly flesh and blood, and some of them mainly not. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Principal, The Garreau Group - **Extract length:** 105 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `consciousness_and_identity`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation` - **Source:** [Cultural revolution correspondent, The Washington Post Principal, The Garreau Group](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11397) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-057 — Inventor and Technologist — Ray Kurzweil > THIRD, on a different front, that of energy, there has been dramatic recent scientific progress in developing hydrogen fuel cells, including microscopic-sized fuel cells using the same technology that fabricates electronic circuits. These fuel cells, based on micro-electronic mechanical systems (MEMS) can be scaled from tiny devices that will power everything from portable electronics up to cars, appliances, and homes. These systems use safe fuels such as methanol and generate no emissions other than tiny amounts of water and carbon dioxide. The fuels can be fabricated without environmental impact from widely available coal and shale oil with new technologies that capture emissions. All of the requisite technologies have been demonstrated. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Principal Developer of the first omni-font optical character recognition - **Extract length:** 110 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Inventor and Technologist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10784) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-058 — Davidson Professor of Management — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi > When people raise concerns about the headlong advance of science and technology they are inevitably ridiculed as Luddites who are trying to interfere with progress. You should not let this fact deter you, Mr. President. Instead, you should remind those who protest that if there is one issue on which scientists agree is that evolution is in itself blind and unconcerned with our ­ or of any other species' ­ wellbeing. It would be strange to exempt scientific progress from this conclusion. Left to itself, the great power of science can be easily misused and misdirected. If we do our best to direct it we may still fail, but at least we tried. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Psychologist; Director, Quality of Life Research Center, Claremont Graduate University; Author, Flow - **Extract length:** 113 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Davidson Professor of Management](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10939) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-059 — Professor of Education at Harvard University — Howard Gardner > First of all, education is an endeavor that is laden with human values. While almost no one disputes the medical goals of longer and healthier lives, we in a democracy differ deeply about the kind of education that we value. How could we ever design a single educational system that would please Jesse Helms, Jesse Jackson, and Jesse Ventura? We cannot conduct meaningful scientific research on educational practices unless we articulate a value system with some specificity. And so, to be concrete, we can’t just compare three scientific methods in terms of efficacy. We need to decide whether we want a science education that focuses on factual knowledge, laboratory skills, deep understanding of a few essential concepts, asking good questions, or some amalgam thereof. Only thereafter can proper studies be launched. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Author, A Synthesizing Mind - **Extract length:** 131 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Professor of Education at Harvard University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11094) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-060 — Professor of Physics and Astronomy — Gino Segre > Through the past century's insights, we have come to realize that we live on an ordinary planet circling a typical star of a mid-sized galaxy. Perhaps there is one additional step—that our very universe is not an anomaly in a continuum of space and time. We can leave a trace greater than Copernicus did. Such discoveries, achieved by scientists engaged in international collaborations and speaking the common language of science may serve as a role model for a world in which national, ethnic and religious barriers are broken down. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Physics & Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania; Author, The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age - **Extract length:** 89 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Professor of Physics and Astronomy](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10798) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-061 — Physicist, writer and broadcaster, now based in South Australia — Paul Davies > What, then, should be the Apollo program of the Bush Presidency? The answer has been clear since your own father articulated the concept in 1989. The United States, together with its partners in space, should commit to sending an expedition to the planet Mars. The Red Planet is probably the only body in the solar system on which a permanent self-sufficient colony might eventually be established. Although relatively hostile to humans, the surface of Mars is far more congenial than the moon. By establishing a human presence on Mars, our species will be afforded an insurance policy against a global cataclysm at home. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Theoretical physicist; cosmologist; astro-biologist; co-Director of BEYOND, Arizona State University; principle investigator, Center for the Convergence of Physical Sciences and Cancer Biology; Author, The Eerie Silence and The Cosmic Jackpot - **Extract length:** 103 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `consciousness_and_identity`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting` - **Source:** [Physicist, writer and broadcaster, now based in South Australia](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10953) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-062 — Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology University of Pennsylvania — Martin Seligman > The civilized world is at war with Jihad Islamic terrorism. It takes a bomb in the office of some academics to make them realize that their most basic values are now threatened, and some of my good friends and colleagues on the Edge seem to have forgotten 9/11. If we lose the war, the laudable, but pet projects they endorse, will not be issues. Fighting fatwahs and no education for women will displace grousing about random assignment of schoolchildren to study education. If we win this war, we can go on to pursue the normal goals of science. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor and Director, Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania; Author, Flourish - **Extract length:** 98 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology University of Pennsylvania](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11109) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-063 — Professor, Dept. of Biological Sciences — Stephen Schneider > The role of science the is clear: assess what can happen and what are the odds of it happening. The role of policy—driven by the beliefs of the public—is to make value judgments on how to react to the odds of various possibilities. It will take some major realignment of institutions like the media and congressional hearings apparatus to back away from the model of polarized advocates toward a doctrine of "perspective": reporting and debating based on the assessment of the likelihood of various events, not giving advocates of extreme opposite views equal time or space. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** climatologist, is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences - **Extract length:** 96 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Professor, Dept. of Biological Sciences](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10812) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-064 — Professor of Chemistry, New York University — Robert Shapiro > The finest days of your administration thus far were the ones immediately after September 11, when you rallied the spirits of this nation by your stand against the terrorists, and the values that they stood for. You pointed out, quite correctly, that their actions represented an attack against civilization itself. But by raising the vision that our civilization was an entity that both needed protection and was worthy of it, you entered an arena of concern that extends far the particular threats of Al Queda and Saddam Hussein. Within your lifetime, the fabric of scientific information that underlies our technological society has become much more richly embroidered, and at the same time much more vulnerable. And its preservation is essential to the survival of our advanced civilization and even of our species. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Senior Research Scientist, New York University; Author, Planetary Dreams - **Extract length:** 132 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `memory_and_persistence`, `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Professor of Chemistry, New York University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10967) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-065 — Psychologist University of Michigan — Richard Nisbett > Generating support for a serious research program would likely be impeded by pessimism on the part of the public. It is distressing how many people assume that little can be done to improve education—especially for minorities. But in fact we have a large number of demonstrations that it is possible for minority students to perform at levels well above the national average—the "Jaime Escalante Effect." Beneficial results for innovations in minority education have been obtained at every level from early elementary school through college. Unfortunately, it is frequently assumed, even by educators, that such results are possible only for charismatic individuals and that they cannot be duplicated by normal people in normal school systems. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished University Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan; Author, Thinking: A Memoir - **Extract length:** 114 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Psychologist University of Michigan](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11123) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-066 — Author of Mapping Mars — Oliver Morton > I wouldn't want you to cut other science and technology spending to this end. But if you were to decide that was the only way to balance the books, then I would say go right ahead. The end purpose of research is knowledge with which to improve the human lot. At the moment we already have the knowledge we need to save hundreds of millions of lives over the coming decades, and if push were to come to shove for a few years, using that knowledge should be a higher priority than storing up more knowledge for the future . - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Chief News and Features Editor - **Extract length:** 100 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Author of Mapping Mars](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10826) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-067 — Computer Scientist And Musician — Jaron Lanier > We might have already contorted the climate enough that switching fuels will not be enough. We might need to resort to a massive technological fix. I dearly hope this will not come to pass, but I believe we should set up an institute that explores such high risk measures as re-carving the ocean floors or intercepting the sun's energy in space on its way to the Earth. Once again, I would grieve if it came to pass that we had to attempt measures such as these in the future, but I must regretfully recommend that we begin to prepare ourselves just in case. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Computer Scientist; Musician; Author, Who Owns The Future? - **Extract length:** 103 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `machine_intelligence`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Computer Scientist And Musician](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10982) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-068 — Emeritus Professor of Psychology University of Minnesota — David Lykken > A research project to collect accurate, detailed information about the psychological and demographic characteristics of all American adjudicated felons, adult and juvenile, contrasted with a non-criminal control group matched for age, race, and gender, would reveal whether I am right in predicting that the great majority of current prison inmates would have become law-abiding neighbors and citizens had they gone home from the obstetrical hospital with a mature, self-supporting, socialized mother and father. The definite confirmation of that hypothesis would encourage state and federal legislators to give serious consideration to, and at least local experimentation with, legislation designed to inhibit further growth of the underclass and to preserve the right of all American children to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Behavioral Geneticist and Emeritus Professor, University of Minnesota - **Extract length:** 122 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Emeritus Professor of Psychology University of Minnesota](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11137) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-069 — Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab — Rodney A. Brooks > To reach out this generous hand to aspiring young students would be courageous in the current domestic climate of fear. But the long term payoff for the United States will be immense. It will create long term personal links between people in the countries we currently most fear and our own country. Based on past experience we can predict that many of those people will rise to positions of leadership and authority within their countries. In the shorter term it will be an act of generosity rather than aggression, and one can hope that it will have positive effects in the way the US is viewed. Besides that we will gain access to a large number of very smart, very driven, young minds who will help us and the world in making scientific progress. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Panasonic Professor of Robotics (emeritus); Former Director, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (1997-2007); Founder, CTO, Robust.AI; Author, Flesh and Machines - **Extract length:** 134 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `consciousness_and_identity`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10840) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-070 — Pioneer of Chaos Theory — J. Doyne Farmer > I would also like to point out that science is patriotic. Good old American know-how is the foundation that has made this a great country. It is no coincidence that so many of the founding fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, had a lifelong passion for science. Science is the engine that has fueled our prosperity. The United States has by far the greatest scientific establishment in the world, the best that has ever existed. So why, at the peak of our scientific power, are we completely ignoring science when it comes to formulating public policy? - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Mathematics, Oxford University; Director, Complexity Economics, Institute for New Economic Thinking, Oxford Martin School; Co-founder, Prediction Company - **Extract length:** 98 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Pioneer of Chaos Theory](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10996) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-071 — Professor of Quantum-Mechanical Engineering — Seth Lloyd > By their potential power, quantum computers pose a significant threat to the security not only of classified encoded material, but to the security of most commercial transactions, in particular those that take place electronically. Despite the clear application of quantum computation to problems of national security, your security agencies have elected to pursue the majority of their research on quantum computers by open competition for public funds, under the stipulation that the results of the research be published and made available to all. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Quantum Mechanical Engineering, MIT; Author, Programming the Universe - **Extract length:** 83 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Professor of Quantum-Mechanical Engineering](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10854) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-072 — Oxfordshire Three-time winner of the Glaxo/ABSW Science Writer of the Year Award. — Colin Tudge > The prime task of 2003 and beyond is to re-define and re-discover the intellectual and moral roots of science. For science has become bound with wealth and power into a positive feedback loop from which it cannot escape: its perceived role in the present age is to provide high technologies of the kind that generate capital which in turn supports more science, of the kind that will provide high technologies to generate more capital and so on and so on. It becomes more and more difficult to finance science that offers no obvious short-term commercial or military reward. Worse: an entire generation of scientists and politicians has grown up that takes it to be self-evident that science should accept its role as the handmaiden of commerce and power. Hence the present uncritical enthusiasm for GMOs, with no clear vision of how they might benefit humankind, and for the industrialisation of agriculture in general, with no knowledge of, or respect for, all that is destroyed along the way. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Biologist; Author, Six Steps Back to the Land - **Extract length:** 167 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values`, `consciousness_and_identity`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Oxfordshire Three-time winner of the Glaxo/ABSW Science Writer of the Year Award.](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11010) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-073 — Founder and Editor, Arts & Letters Daily — Denis Dutton > Since I'm sure you're keen to avoid such alarmism, you'll need an advisor who can see through the fashions of science, and understand something of their psychology. The epidemiologist who slightly overstates the conclusiveness of his study suggesting that french fries might cause cancer (in mice) or the young climatologist on the global-warming gravy train are not basically dishonest people. You too might more easily buy into some doomsday scenario, if it meant regular business-class flights to major resorts to compare computer climate models with other experts (models that you know in your heart could not possibly predict average atmospheric temperatures fifty years hence, but what hell, the food's great). - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Philosopher; Founder and Editor, Arts & Letters Daily; Author, The Art Instinct - **Extract length:** 110 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `machine_intelligence` - **Source:** [Founder and Editor, Arts & Letters Daily](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10868) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-074 — Mathematician and computer scientist — Marvin Minsky > Marvin Minsky Mathematician and computer scientist Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences; Cofounder of Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. MIT Author of eight books, including The Society of Mind. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Mathematician; computer scientist; Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT; cofounder, MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; author, The Emotion Machine - **Extract length:** 28 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `consciousness_and_identity` - **Source:** [Mathematician and computer scientist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11023) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-075 — retired professor of physics — Freeman Dyson > Meanwhile, a new century has begun. It is time for you to launch a bold new initiative in biology, a planetary genome project to sequence the genomes of all the millions of species that live together on this planet. This will require first of all an aggressive development of new sequencing technology, comparable to the development of computer technology during the last half century, so that the cost of sequencing will continue to fall as rapidly as the cost of computing. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Physicist, Institute of Advanced Study; Author, Disturbing the Universe; Maker of Patterns - **Extract length:** 81 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [retired professor of physics](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10883) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-076 — Science historian — George Dyson > I appreciate the opportunity to offer some advice. We currently have no shortage of scientific expertise to deal with the manifold issues facing this nation and the world. What’s missing is that science (and engineering) is no longer a fundamental priority of the national agenda—the way it was when Sputnik galvanized us into action in the aftermath of World War II. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Science Historian; Author, Analogia - **Extract length:** 61 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Science historian](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11037) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-077 — Editor-in-Chief Nature — Philip Campbell > The journal Nature recently published the sequence of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum's genome, and other related fundamental information critical in understanding the parasite. That's a key step along the way, and provides a new platform on which to develop essential insights into the many biomolecular and cellular pathways by which the parasite survives and interacts with us, its indispensible hosts. New techniques are beginning to be applied, such as high-throughput analyses of the pattern of gene expression and of the interactions of proteins at key phases of the parasite's lifecycle. The new availability of the genome combined with these techniques will undoubtedly spur progress significantly—if there are funds to permit it. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Editor-in-Chief of Nature since 1995; Beginning summer 2018, he will become Editor-in-Chief of Springer Nature’s portfolio of journals, books and magazines - **Extract length:** 112 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Editor-in-Chief Nature](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10897) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-078 — Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences University of Washington, Seattle — William H. Calvin > When the patient is civilization itself, science can provide a heads-up—but only the best politicians have the talent to implement the foresight. And coming on stage now is a stunning example of how civilization must rescue itself. Looked at one way, the story is about abrupt climate change—but similar lessons about shocks and instability likely apply to our current problems with suicidal terrorists. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Theoretical Neurobiologist; Affiliate Professor Emeritus, University of Washington; Author, Global Fever - **Extract length:** 63 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences University of Washington, Seattle](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11051) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-079 — Pioneer in sequencing the human genome — J. Craig Venter > On this same preventative theme we can greatly diminish or effectively eliminate the threat of bioterrorism by using the modern tools of genomics to more quickly and accurately detect a suspect agent including genetically modified organisms; develop new effective vaccines without the risk profile associated with current small pox and anthrax vaccines; and develop new effective antivirals and antibiotics. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** A leading scientist of the 21st century for Genomic Sciences; Co-Founder, Chairman, Synthetic Genomics, Inc.; Founder, J. Craig Venter Institute; Author, A Life Decoded - **Extract length:** 59 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Pioneer in sequencing the human genome](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10757) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-080 — Editor-At-Large, Wired — Kevin Kelly > While the United States is among the nations leading the world in monitoring and mapping its own territory, most of the world has not been mapped. We, as humans, lack a sufficient survey of the geology, habitat, weather, and biological diversity of our home planet. For instance we have identified as few as 5% of all the species living on earth. A detailed map of the planet, which would include geological assets, urban impacts, ecological assessments, and detailed cartographic information would be invaluable to business, military intelligence, social work, and peace and prosperity, at the very least, to the US. As it is we are trying to run a planet with only a dim sense of what it is. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Senior Maverick, Wired; Author, What Technology Wants and The Inevitable - **Extract length:** 119 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `machine_intelligence`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Editor-At-Large, Wired](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10911) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-081 — Professor of computer science, Yale University — David Gelernter > The best thing that happened to U.S. science in the last half-century was the Cold War and its consequences—one of them being the Space Race. Americans cared about space in the 1960s as they'd never cared about any science or engineering project before, and never have since. The social catastrophe of the late '60s tends to obscure the spectacular achievements of those years. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Computer Scientist, Yale University; Chief Scientist, Mirror Worlds Technologies; Author, America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled our Culture (and ushered in the Obamacrats) - **Extract length:** 63 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Professor of computer science, Yale University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11065) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-082 — Peter de Florez Professor of Psychology — Steven Pinker > Your father called himself "the education president," and you have promised new educational policies in which "no child is left behind." These affirmations of the centrality of education in a modern democracy are admirable. As our economy comes to depend increasingly on technology, and as modern media present us with unprecedented choices – in our lifestyles, our workplaces, and our political commitments – a child who cannot master an ever-increasing body of skills and knowledge will be left farther and farther behind. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Johnstone Family Professor, Department of Psychology; Harvard University; Author, Rationality - **Extract length:** 82 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Peter de Florez Professor of Psychology](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10771) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-083 — Interim CEO of Cometa Networks, Inc. — Larry Brilliant, MD > • 5) I do not want to go into the fear that a small minority of Americans have that the your administration is prone to exaggerate the risks of terrorism in general and smallpox in particular as part of an attempt to frighten the public into accepting the erosion of civil liberties. As horrible as that allegation is, I simply have no information on which to make any comment other than to note the fear exists. And for my purposes here, it really does not matter. Based on the evidence I have seen to date, the risk of getting a case of vaccine-preventable smallpox today is just not as high as the risk of an adverse reaction to the smallpox vaccine. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Pandemics researcher; Chairman of the Advisory Board for "Ending Pandemics"; Fmr. Professor of Epidemiology, U. Michigan - **Extract length:** 121 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Interim CEO of Cometa Networks, Inc.](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10925) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-084 — Theoretical Physicist Cambridge University — Janna Levin > No one can guess the shape or size or language of the next genius but we can all participate in the knowledge that is woven of all of our contributions. Through a well-supported scientific initiative we could develop energy sources to better protect our planet, cure AIDS, and understand the origin and fate of our entire universe. No small aims. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Barnard College of Columbia University; Author, Black Hole Survival Guide; Director of Sciences, Pioneer Works - **Extract length:** 60 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Theoretical Physicist Cambridge University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11080) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-085 — Professor of Physics — George Smoot > The path I did not mention was to stop or slow dramatically scientific research and the development of new technologies and hope or search for a new stability. We cannot stop things completely because other countries already have significant scientific and technological capability. Already third-rate countries, such as Iraq and North Korea, are able to have advanced welcome programs. We could enter new dark ages, the Nuclear Dark Ages or Weapons of Mass Destruction Dark Ages. I don't mean nuclear winter from the exchange of thousands of nuclear weapons; but a more gradual but catastrophe filled deterioration. In the new Dark Ages there will be a repeat of regional wars, blackmail and spoils of war, occasional small nuclear exchanges, all of these leading to a spiraling down of civilization. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** experimental astrophysics and observational cosmology - **Extract length:** 129 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Professor of Physics](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10644) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-086 — Associate Professor of Linguistics — John McWhorter > Military institutions, and other bodies with a concrete reason for teaching their charges foreign languages well, such as religious bodies, have long used truly effective, intense language-learning programs that produce competent foreign language speakers. It is also clear that European countries regularly give their students a solid grounding in English that has always been the envy of Americans. For years, I have been amazed at how an obscure series of books published by the Assimil company in Europe can give the solitary learner a decent conversational competence in any language in just six months of home study, so cleverly are the lessons arranged to impart what is really needed to speak the language in real life. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Linguistics and Western Civilization, Columbia University; Cultural Commentator; Author, Words on the Move - **Extract length:** 116 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Associate Professor of Linguistics](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10658) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-087 — Director, Initiative on Technology and Self MIT — Sherry Turkle > • Professional development for teachers, both preservice and inservice, needs to emphasize not simply how computer technology works but on how it can spark creativity across disciplines. There appear to be a group of learners, predominantly young men, who are willing to throw themselves into computing, presented as a technical puzzle. But given the integration of computing into culture, those in the field need to have broader interests and motivation for being there. Improving the way computation is introduced in education will thus not only draw in young women and keep them from dropping out, it holds our only chance of having a more broadly based computer culture for all of us. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, MIT; Internet Culture Researcher; Author, The Empathy Diaries - **Extract length:** 112 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `consciousness_and_identity` - **Source:** [Director, Initiative on Technology and Self MIT](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10672) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-088 — Professor of Physics at University of California — Gregory Benford > 3) Push innovative energy research. Hand Ray Orbach at DOE the paper by Hoffert et al, in Science 298, (p 981, 2002) and ask him to implement its suggestions. You should also probably help develop nuclear power in the most needy areas of the developing nations. With safeguards against nuclear proliferation, this could cut down on the default choice many are using—coal burning plants. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy, UC-Irvine; Novelist, The Berlin Project - **Extract length:** 64 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Professor of Physics at University of California](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10686) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-089 — Presidential Professor, University of New Mexico — Vera John-Steiner > For a while after the defeat of Fascism and Nazism in the Second World War, there was a hope for an era of enlightenment. It was thought that a scientific understanding of its sources could help avoid a repetition of the fascist nightmare. The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor Adorno and co authors was a well known effort to achieve such understanding. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Presidential Professor, University of New Mexico - **Extract length:** 61 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Presidential Professor, University of New Mexico](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10700) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-090 — Chairman/Founder of AeroVironment Inc. — Paul MacCready > The world can support 1.5 to 2.0 billion people continuously, in combination with a natural world. Right now we have 6.2 billion people. The total mass of vertebrates on land and in the air is now made up 98% by humans+livestock+pets, and 2% by all natural creatures. Ten thousand years ago the 98% was only under 0.1%. Civilization's rocketing growth comes from exploiting non-renewables: coal since 1800 and oil since 1900, for example. US oil peaked about 15 years ago; global supplies should peak in about 10-15 years. There are semi-practical alternatives available or at least conceivable to let us get by on renewables, but virtually no one really sees the importance. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Chairman/Founder of AeroVironment Inc. - **Extract length:** 112 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Chairman/Founder of AeroVironment Inc.](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10714) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-091 — Science writer and Commentator — Margaret Wertheim > Another task our office might consider is ways in which scientific organizations could be partnered with cultural organizations such as art galleries and museums. So often science is presented as an isolated activity, but like all human enterprises science takes place within the context of the wider social and cultural spectrum. One way to draw more people into science, I believe, is to bring them through the portal of their other interests. There are, for example, many artists today producing work based around scientific themes—genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and computation in particular. This work, and the immense interest in the arts world in scientific issues right now, constitutes a formidable resource. Our office could work to create links between artists and scientists in specific areas of mutual interest. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** science writer and commentator - **Extract length:** 127 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence` - **Source:** [Science writer and Commentator](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10729) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-092 — Professor and Head of Department of Gene Expression and Development at the Roslin Institute — Ian Wilmut > Each year thousands of people in the USA are killed by taking medicines, even if the medicine was prescribed and used appropriately. This is because people differ in the way that they react to drugs. Pharmaceutical companies would be able to reduce this risk to us all and design drugs to be safer and more effective if they could study these differences in function of liver cells. At present the only source of such cells for research is the liver of casualties, if the organ is not suitable for transfer to a patient. Liver cells with these important differences in responses to drugs could be derived from cloned embryos and be used first to study these genetic differences and then to design better drugs and to establish the basis for personalised treatments. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Chair of Reproductive Biology, Director Scottish Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University of Edinburgh; Author, After Dolly - **Extract length:** 132 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Professor and Head of Department of Gene Expression and Development at the Roslin Institute](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10743) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2003-093 — a physicist — Philip Brockman > The current method in government research is to work on projects with a one or two year payoff. This is where our nation's corporations have gone in the last few years. Government is now following corporate America's lead in pursuing instant gratification rather than research which reaches over the horizon. It is now an MBA-driven culture, one which is anithetical to the long horizon stuff that inevitably leads to future breakthroughs. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Physicist - **Extract length:** 71 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [a physicist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10643) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted