# Edge 2007 Full Quotation Curation This is a source-first local curation of the complete Edge Annual Question response cohort, *WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT?*. 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 YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT?](https://www.edge.org/annual-question/what-are-you-optimistic-about) - **Aggregate response archive:** [View all responses](https://www.edge.org/responses/what-are-you-optimistic-about) - **Archive year:** 2007 - **Response rows represented:** 152 - **Rows with substantive textual extracts:** 152 - **Rows without a substantive extract:** 0 - **Institutional router:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] - **Promoted archive entries:** 2 - **Canonical reminder files linked:** 2 - **Not yet promoted:** 150 ## 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 ### EDGE2007-001 — Computer Scientist; 1st Generation Artificial Intelligence Pioneer, Stanford University — John Mccarthy > "To us, to whom safety has become monotony, to whom the primeval savageries of nature are so remote as to become a mere pleasing condiment to our ordered routine, the world of dreams is very different from what it was amid the wars of Guelf and Ghibelline. Hence William James's protest against what he calls the "block universe" of the classical tradition; hence Nietsche's worship of force; hence the verbal bloodthirstiness of many quiet literary men. The barbaric substratum of human nature, unsatisfied in action, finds an outlet in imagination. In philosophy, as elsewhere, this tendency is visible; and it is this, rather than formal argument, that has thrust aside the classical tradition for a philosophy which fancies itself more virile and more vital." - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University - **Extract length:** 124 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence` - **Source:** [Computer Scientist; 1st Generation Artificial Intelligence Pioneer, Stanford University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11919) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-002 — New Prospects of Immortality — Marvin Minsky > In any case, such objections are shortsighted because, once we embody our minds in machines, we'll find ways to expand their capacities. You'll be able to edit your former mind, or merge it with parts of other minds — or develop completely new ways to think. Furthermore, our future technologies will no longer constrain us to think at the crawling pace of "real time." The events in our computers already proceed a millions times faster than those in our brain. To such beings, a minute might seem as long as a human year. - **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:** 93 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `memory_and_persistence`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation` - **Source:** [New Prospects of Immortality](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11934) - **Reminder status:** Promoted — [[reminders/Mind Upload/Machine Minds Could Edit Merge and Accelerate Themselves by Marvin Minsky|Machine Minds Could Edit Merge and Accelerate Themselves by Marvin Minsky]] ### EDGE2007-003 — Cosmologist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Recipient, The Nobel Prize For Physics 2006; Coauthor, Wrinkles in Time — George Smoot > Given this and the history of human society in cooperatively plundering the resources of a meager but beautiful planet with currently abundant resources, who can possibly be optimistic about the long-term future of humanity? How many examples do we have of humans addressing global problems in an efficient way and with enlightened self-interest? Historical experience is that humans have generally been engaged in warfare, exploitation for personal gain and religious strife. Real issues are generally not addressed until they become serious crises and often not even then. We could mention here, various episodes of genocide, large-scale pollution, and ecological devastation, which are often interrelated. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** experimental astrophysics and observational cosmology - **Extract length:** 104 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Cosmologist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Recipient, The Nobel Prize For Physics 2006; Coauthor, Wrinkles in Time](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11950) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-004 — CEO, Managing Director, Intellectual Ventures; Former Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft Corporation; Physicist, Paleontologist,Photographer, Chef — Nathan Myhrvold > Perhaps the biggest reason I am optimistic is that I am a huge believer in the power of educated people to make important innovations. The trends in China and India and elsewhere toward educating literally millions of people with scientific, engineering and technical degrees is tremendously positive. It is trendy in some US-centric circles to bemoan the fact that China and India are graduating more engineers than the US — indeed the developing has the potential to graduate more engineers than the US has people. I view that with tremendous optimism — at least on the whole. There will be negative consequences to be sure, and some naysayer will whine about them. History is clear that the negatives of bringing high levels of education to heretofore under educated people are more than outweighed by the tremendous positives. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** CEO and Managing Director, Intellectual Ventures; Co-Author (with Bill Gates), The Road Ahead; Author, Modernist Cuisine - **Extract length:** 137 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [CEO, Managing Director, Intellectual Ventures; Former Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft Corporation; Physicist, Paleontologist,Photographer, Chef](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11967) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-005 — Evolutionary Biologist, Rutgers University; Coauthor, Genes In Conflict: The Biology of Selfish Genetic Elements — Robert Trivers > Are there long-term trends we could feel optimistic about? Thirty years of work on the evolutionary trajectory of cooperative strategies suggest long-term trends (under a broad range of conditions) toward greater cooperation, contingent on ever more sophisticated discrimination. It seems likely that when similar models are produced for varying degrees of deceit and self-deception, long-term trends toward honesty to others and self will (at least under some conditions) be favored. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Evolutionary Biologist; Professor of Anthropology and Biological Sciences, Rutgers University; Author, Wild Life: Adventures of an Evolutionary Biologist - **Extract length:** 70 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Evolutionary Biologist, Rutgers University; Coauthor, Genes In Conflict: The Biology of Selfish Genetic Elements](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11982) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-006 — President, The Royal Society; Professor of Cosmology & Astrophysics; Master, Trinity College, University of Cambridge; Author, Our Final Century: The 50/50 Threat to Humanity's Survival — Martin Rees > There are indeed powerful grounds for being a techno-optimist. . For most people in most nations, there's never been a better time to be alive. The innovations that will drive economic advance —information technology, biotech and nanotech—can boost the developing as well as the developed world. We're becoming embedded in a cyberspace that can link anyone, anywhere, to all the world's information and culture—and to every other person on the planet. Creativity in science and the arts is open to hugely more than in the past. 21st century technologies will offer lifestyles that are environmentally benign—involving lower demands on energy or resources than what we'd consider a good life today. And we could readily raise the funds - were there the political will—to lift the world's two billion most deprived people from their extreme poverty. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Former President, The Royal Society; Emeritus Professor of Cosmology & Astrophysics, University of Cambridge; Fellow, Trinity College; Author, From Here to Infinity - **Extract length:** 135 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [President, The Royal Society; Professor of Cosmology & Astrophysics; Master, Trinity College, University of Cambridge; Author, Our Final Century: The 50/50 Threat to Humanity's Survival](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11691) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-007 — Director, The Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics, The University of Calgary; Author, At Home in the Universe — Stuart A. Kauffman > In the past few years evidence has increased that "cancer stem cells" play a fundamental role in cancer. Typically comprising about 1% or less of a total tumor mass, these cancer stem cells appear to have unlimited proliferation potential, and the capacity to drive cancer growth. In addition, cancer stem cells have been implicated in metastasis. Cancer stem cells have already been found in the leukemias, lung, colon, prostate, breast, skin, ovarian, and neural cancers. They may be present in all cancers. Their discovery may be the most important discovery in cancer biology in the past half century. Cancer stem cells are likely to afford entirely new cancer therapies in the modestly near future. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Biological Sciences, Physics, Astronomy, University of Calgary; Author, Reinventing the Sacred - **Extract length:** 114 words - **Trajectory signals:** `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Director, The Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics, The University of Calgary; Author, At Home in the Universe](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11888) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-008 — Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Diego — Beatrice Golomb > Indeed, the benefits of a new, Internet-based approach may be particularly great for the most important work: work that challenges existing orthodoxy; work that defines a new field and fits no existing journal; work that crosses boundaries to other disciplines—with their own often arbitrary conventions and in-groups; or that demands knowledge from two or more disciplines; science that is ahead of its time, that entails many advances at once or that founds new work on an understanding of relevant material that others do not yet have. Or, too, work that runs counter to vested interest groups—particularly but hardly exclusively in the arena of medicine, where the potent impact of industry influence on information has been the subject of increasing alarm—and where disparities between literature and truth may cost patients' lives. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Medicine at UCSD - **Extract length:** 130 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Diego](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11721) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-009 — Psychologist, Harvard Medical School & Harvard University’s Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative; Author, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty — Nancy Etcoff > I'll admit that the initial yield from the new science of happiness did little to support my optimism. It showed that happiness levels are durable, withstanding sweeping changes in health and wealth. Life changes, it suggests, but you don't. It showed that there is a substantial genetic component to happiness. People have a personal baseline of happiness that is influenced by stable personality traits such as extroversion or neuroticism that are partly heritable The happiness baseline has been likened to the body weight set point, leading some to believe that adding permanent points on the happiness scale is as likely as offloading pounds permanently from the weight scale. You've got a battle on your hands with a formidable opponent: yourself. Short of a biological fix, happiness interventions seemed doomed to formidable recidivism rates. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Psychologist and faculty member of the Harvard Medical School and of Harvard University - **Extract length:** 133 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `consciousness_and_identity`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation` - **Source:** [Psychologist, Harvard Medical School & Harvard University’s Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative; Author, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11904) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-010 — Physicist; Albert Einstein Professor of Science, Princeton University; Coauthor, Endless Universe: A New History of the Cosmos — Paul J. Steinhardt > The impact will be profound. As we enter 2007, we understand the composition of less than five percent of the universe; we do not understand how space, time, matter and energy were created; and we cannot predict where the universe is headed. In the next five years, we may witness the historic resolution of one or more of these issues. I have my personal bet on what the individual outcomes will be; but the only prediction I will reveal here is that, with the opening of so many new windows on the cosmos, we are sure to discover something unanticipated and astonishing. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Albert Einstein Professor in Science, Departments of Physics and Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University; Coauthor, Endless Universe - **Extract length:** 102 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Physicist; Albert Einstein Professor of Science, Princeton University; Coauthor, Endless Universe: A New History of the Cosmos](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11736) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-011 — Quantum physicist, Oxford University; Author, The Fabric of Reality — David Deutsch > They always are. Why is that important? Firstly, because it is true. There is no anthropocentric spite built into the laws of physics, mandating that human improvement may proceed this far and no further. Nor is the dark, neo-religious fantasy true that Nature abhors human hubris, and always exacts a hidden price that outweighs any apparent success, so that 'progress' always has to be in scare quotes. And secondly, because how we explain failure, both prospectively and retrospectively, is itself a major determinant of success. If we are optimistic that failure to improve ourselves always means failure to find the solution, then success is never due to divine grace (nowadays known as 'natural resources') but always to human effort and creativity, and failure is opportunity. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Physicist, University of Oxford; Author, The Beginning of Infinity; Recipient, Edge Computation Science Prize - **Extract length:** 125 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Quantum physicist, Oxford University; Author, The Fabric of Reality](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11555) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-012 — Neuroscientist, Stanford University, Author, A Primate's Memoir — Robert Sapolsky > As a neurobiologist, I'm particularly impressed with and discouraged by one finding relevant to this. There's a part of the brain called the amygdala that has lots to do with fear and anxiety and aggression. Functional brain imaging studies of humans show that the amygdala becomes metabolically active when we look at a scary face (even when the face is flashed up so quickly that we aren't consciously aware of seeing it). And some recent work—solid, done by top people, independently replicated — suggests that the amygdala can become activated when we view the face of someone from another race. The Them as scary, and the Them being someone whose skin color is real different from our own. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Neuroscientist, Stanford University; Author, Behave - **Extract length:** 118 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation` - **Source:** [Neuroscientist, Stanford University, Author, A Primate's Memoir](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11751) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-013 — Physicist and Nobel Laureate; Director Emeritus, Fermilab; Coauthor, The God Particle — Leon M. Lederman > Eminent CEO's like Bill Gates (Microsoft), Craig Barrett (Intel), Louis Gerstner (IBM), Norman Augustine (Lockheed Martin) i.e. Corporations which depend on rationality for their profits, all agree that our system of 50 independent States, 15,000 school districts, 26,000 high schools etc etc has failed catastrophically to educate our students for life and work in the 21st century. But the good news is that the portent of our failed educational system as it impacts our health care, our economy, our culture and our status in the globalized world is finally becoming clear, clear to parents, clear to economists, clear, gasp! even to members of the Congress! - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory - **Extract length:** 105 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Physicist and Nobel Laureate; Director Emeritus, Fermilab; Coauthor, The God Particle](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11571) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-014 — Cofounder and Director, The Science Network; Neuroscience Researcher, Center for Brain and Cognition, UCSD; Coauthor, The Origin of Minds; Creator PBS Science Programs — Roger Bingham > There's evidence, too, that women have a proportionally larger anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and insula than men. From quite recent brain imaging studies, we now know that these areas are important components of the circuitry that underpins our ability to process complex social emotions, ‘read' the faces and minds of the people we encounter as we navigate through social space, understand and predict their behavior, make moral judgments and empathize. (Of course, everything I am saying should have the usual scientific safety net of caveats—the differences exist at the level of populations, not individuals; cultural factors play an important role; etc.) - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Cofounder and Director, The Science Network; Neuroscience Researcher, Center for Brain and Cognition, UCSD; Coauthor, The Origin of Minds; Creator PBS Science Programs - **Extract length:** 101 words - **Trajectory signals:** `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Cofounder and Director, The Science Network; Neuroscience Researcher, Center for Brain and Cognition, UCSD; Coauthor, The Origin of Minds; Creator PBS Science Programs](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11781) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-015 — Science Journalist; Co-author, Why Good Things Happen To Good People — Jill Neimark > There are maps, and then there are maps. We're embarking on a kind of mapmaking that will usher in new ways of understanding ourselves-a map that can explain why identical twins are not truly identical, so that one succumbs to schizophrenia while the other remains cognitively intact; why what your mom ate can save or sabotage your health (as well as that of your children and your children's children); and how our genetic fates can be tuned by such simple universals as love or vitamins. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Science Journalist; Co-author, Why Good Things Happen To Good People - **Extract length:** 85 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Science Journalist; Co-author, Why Good Things Happen To Good People](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11586) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-016 — Senior Editor, Discover Magazine; Adjunct Professor, Science Journalism, NYU; Author: God in the Equation: How Einstein Transformed Religion — Corey S. Powell > In the future, many people will choose to do so; we will all have personalized, searchable databases at our commands. Rapid advances in brain prostheses mean that soon we will be able to access those databases simply by the power of thought. Within a couple decades, the information will be beamed back in a form the brain can interpret—we will be able to hear the playback in much the manner that deaf people can now hear the world with cochlear implants. Vision is slightly more difficult but it too will be reverse engineered. That will undoubtedly give space exploration a tremendous boost. Earthbound scientists will be able to "inhabit" robotic explorers on other worlds, and any interested participant will be able to log on passively to experience the adventure. Humans will venture into space physically as well but at first that will happen primarily for sport, I expect. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Senior Editor, Discover Magazine; Adjunct Professor, Science Journalism, NYU; Author: God in the Equation: How Einstein Transformed Religion - **Extract length:** 148 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `consciousness_and_identity`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation` - **Source:** [Senior Editor, Discover Magazine; Adjunct Professor, Science Journalism, NYU; Author: God in the Equation: How Einstein Transformed Religion](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11798) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-017 — Founder and CEO, Neoteny — Joichi Ito > I believe that the Internet, open source and a global culture of discourse and sharing will become the pillar of democracy for the 21st century. Whereas those in power—as well as terrorists who are not—have used broadcast technology and the mass media of the 20th century against the free world, I am optimistic that Internet will enable the collective voice of the people and that voice will be a voice of reason and good will. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Director, MIT Media Lab; Coauthor (with Jeff Howe), Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future - **Extract length:** 75 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Founder and CEO, Neoteny](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11601) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-018 — Journalist, La Stampa; Italy Correspondent, Science Magazine — Francesco DePretis > First, the quantum teletransportation between light and matter, experienced in Copenhagen last October. This is not the first time so particular a phenomenon is proved to be real but the experiment, held at the Niels Bohr Institutet, opens new and fascinating perspectives in the field of quantum computation: through the entanglement’s process is now possible to stock quantum data; with this discovery, the short future might be even more intriguing. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Journalist, La Stampa; Italy Correspondent, Science Magazine - **Extract length:** 70 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Journalist, La Stampa; Italy Correspondent, Science Magazine](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11813) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-019 — Evolutionary Biologist, Reading University, England — Mark Pagel > The British playwright Dennis Potter in a public speech not long before his death defended the BBC—a decidedly undemocratic and state-owned institution—for its very lack of populism. To Potter the role of the BBC was to decide for the rest of us the standards of what should be deemed good art, drama, history and reporting, and to challenge us intellectually and aesthetically. A dangerous state of affairs? Elitism? Maybe. But I am optimistic that people are recognising that democracy simplistically applied, without an eye on the larger Project, can easily descend into an ochlocracy ruled by the groups that shout the loudest. Even by the middle of the 19th century Disraeli was saying "the world is wearied of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians". - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Evolutionary Biology, Reading University, UK; Fellow, Royal Society; Author, Wired for Culture - **Extract length:** 125 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Evolutionary Biologist, Reading University, England](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11616) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-020 — Physicist, String Theorist, Columbia University; Author, The Fabric of the Cosmos — Brian Greene > As I help raise my two year old son, I witness a basic truth familiar to parents through the ages and across the continents — we begin life as uninhibited explorers with a boundless fascination for the ever-growing world to which we have access. And what I find amazing is that if that fascination is fed, and if it's challenged, and if it's nurtured, it can grow to an intellect capable of grappling with such marvels as the quantum nature of reality, the energy locked inside the atom, the curved spacetime of the cosmos, the elementary constituents of matter, the genetic code underlying life, the neural circuitry responsible for consciousness, and perhaps even the very origin of the universe. While we evolved to survive, once we have the luxury of taking such survival for granted, the ability of our species to unravel mysteries grand and deep is awe inspiring. I'm optimistic that the world will increasingly value the power of such rational thought and will increasingly rely on its insights in making the most critical decisions. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Co-founder of the World Science Festival and Chairman, Science Festival Foundation; Professor of Mathematics & Physics, Columbia University; author, The Hidden Reality, The Fabric of the Cosmos, and The Elegant Universe - **Extract length:** 176 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Physicist, String Theorist, Columbia University; Author, The Fabric of the Cosmos](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11827) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-021 — Co-founder, Wikipedia — Larry Sanger > Researchers—scholars, scientists, professionals of all sorts, and indeed, all folks who love books—are, as I say, drawn to the wiki model of strong collaboration in growing numbers. It's an accident of history that methods of strong collaboration online began among programmers and then spread into use by a completely egalitarian community, Wikipedia, and its many imitators. The next step in the evolution, which we are now witnessing on many fronts at once, is the adoption of wikis, and similarly dynamic and efficient "Web 2.0" methods of strong collaboration, by knowledge workers, or (as in the case of my new project, the Citizendium) huge open communities that are gently guided by experts. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Co-founder of Wikipedia and Citizendium - **Extract length:** 111 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Co-founder, Wikipedia](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11646) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-022 — Psychologist, University of Texas, Austin; Author, The Murderer Next Door — David M. Buss > Each one of us has descended from a long and unbroken line of ancestors who mated successfully. They all found love or at least a liaison. Evolution has forged a motivation to mate so powerful that it propels us to surmount impressive, daunting, and demoralizing obstacles. The first problem is prioritizing conflicting mate preferences, compromising on some to attain others. Searchers must then sift through hundreds of options, limiting pursuit to potentials within shouting distance of attainability. Desirable mates bring out determined rivals, forcing fierce competition. Complex and subtle attraction tactics must succeed in unlocking minds and melting hearts. After making it through these mine fields, there is no rest for the weary. Post-mating, sexual conflicts erupt, undermining months or years of effort. Mate poachers abound, threatening to lure our lovers. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin; Author, When Men Behave Badly - **Extract length:** 131 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Psychologist, University of Texas, Austin; Author, The Murderer Next Door](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11842) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-023 — Philosopher, School of Advanced Study, University of London; Coeditor, Knowing Our Own Minds — Barry C. Smith > At first, my suggestion may sound rather pessimistic, but what I am optimistic about is that ultimately monopolies fail. By which I mean, attempts to dominate our tastes, our preferences, our culture, our media, our political policies, or moral choices. Restless creatures that we are, we seek out variety and difference, opportunities to extend the scope of our thinking and to exercise discrimination and taste. This may make us hard to satisfy, but, ultimately, it is this lack of satisfaction that leads to progress and spells the end of hegemonies in ideology, religion, or science. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor & Director, Institute of Philosophy School of Advanced Study University of London - **Extract length:** 95 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Philosopher, School of Advanced Study, University of London; Coeditor, Knowing Our Own Minds](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11661) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-024 — Electrical Engineer, USC; Author, Noise — Bart Kosko > Rising computer power led to the first large break with the math-model approach in various species of artificial intelligence. Computer scientists programmed expert-system search trees directly from words. Some put uncertainty math models on the trees but the tree structure itself used words or text strings. The non-numerical structure let experts directly encode their expertise in verbal rules. That removed the old math models but still left the problem of literally doing only what the expert or modeler said to do. Adaptive fuzzy rule-based systems allowed experts to state rules in words while the fuzzy system itself remained numeric. Data could in principle overcome modeler bias by adapting the rule structure in new directions as the data poured in. That reduced expert or modeler input to little more than giving initial conditions and occasional updates to the inference structure. Still all these AI tree-based knowledge systems suffer from the curse of dimensionality in some form of combinatorial rule explosion. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Information Scientist and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Law, University of Southern California; Author, Noise, Fuzzy Thinking - **Extract length:** 159 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Electrical Engineer, USC; Author, Noise](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11857) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-025 — Biologist; Cloning Researcher; Roslin Institute, Edinburgh; Coauthor, The Second Creation — Ian Wilmut > In time information of this kind may also greatly increase the accuracy of selection of appropriate medication for particular patients. At present an adverse response to medicines is a major cause of death or the need for hospital treatment, even if the medicine is appropriately prescribed and taken. This is because of differences between people in the response to drugs. It is probably fanciful to think of tailoring medications for each person, because this implies a full knowledge for every person of their likely response to and metabolism of every compound that might be considered as a medicine. However, it does seem likely that understanding of these mechanisms will lead to improved design and selection of new compounds. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Chair of Reproductive Biology, Director Scottish Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University of Edinburgh; Author, After Dolly - **Extract length:** 118 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Biologist; Cloning Researcher; Roslin Institute, Edinburgh; Coauthor, The Second Creation](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11676) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-026 — Chief News and Features Editor, Nature; Author, Mapping Mars — Oliver Morton > My current optimism is for solar energy. The simple facts of the matter are that the sun provides more energy to the earth in an hour than humanity makes use of in a year. Of the non-fossil-fuel energy sources, all the big players that are not nuclear—biomass, hydroelectric, wind—are ultimately driven by the sun. I am optimistic that direct solar conversion—photovoltaic cells and their future analogues—will come to take its place among and then surpass these more established technologies a lot more quickly than most people outside the area currently imagine. I'am hoping for at least a terawatt of solar by 2025, two if we're lucky, and dramatic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions as a result. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Chief News and Features Editor - **Extract length:** 116 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting` - **Source:** [Chief News and Features Editor, Nature; Author, Mapping Mars](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11873) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-027 — Writer; Futurist; Author, Passionate Minds — David Bodanis > I'm optimistic because there's a core decency in people that even the worst machinations of governments can't entirely hold down. The Evelina hospital is the first new children's hospital that's been built in London in a century. There's a giant atrium in the middle, and the contract with the company doing the cleaning says that the window cleaners need to dress up as superheroes. The children in bed—many with grave illnesses—delight in seeing Superman and Spiderman dangling just inches away from them, on the outside of the glass; apparently for the cleaners it's one of the best part of their week. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Writer; Futurist; Author, Einstein's Greatest Mistake - **Extract length:** 101 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Writer; Futurist; Author, Passionate Minds](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11512) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-028 — Science Writer; Author, Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind — David Berreby > I think it's fair to say that scientists have shown that people are not identity zombies. Much work has been done (some by people on Edge, like Mahzarin Banaji and Scott Atran) that shows how the connections between identity and behavior are never so simple. It's clear that all of us have many overlapping identities (American, middle-aged person, Episcopalian, Republican, soccer mom can be attached to one person in a single morning); it's what we're doing, and who we're doing it with, that seems to determine which of these identities comes to the fore at a given time. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Journalist; Author, Us and Them - **Extract length:** 98 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity` - **Source:** [Science Writer; Author, Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11192) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-029 — Physicist, Stanford University; Author, The Cosmic Landscape — Leonard Susskind > I am optimistic about the adaptability of the human brain to answer questions that evolution could not have designed it for. A brain that can rewire itself to visualize 4 dimensions, or the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, is clearly going way beyond the things that natural selection could have wired it for. It makes me optimistic that we may be able to go beyond our Darwinian roots in other ways. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Felix Bloch Professor in Theoretical Physics, Stanford; Author, The Theoretical Minimum series - **Extract length:** 69 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Physicist, Stanford University; Author, The Cosmic Landscape](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11360) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-030 — Science fiction novelist; Blogger; Technology activist; Co-editor, Boing Boing — Cory Doctorow > I'm optimistic that the risks of anti-copying technology and the copyright wars are starting to move to the mainstream. Daily newspapers are reporting on the risks from Zune's DRM; governments and librarians are starting to question the fairy tales from the entertainment industry. The British government is poised to be the first government in history to reject a proposal to extend copyright. A Canadian MP lost her seat last year because she'd sold out the country to a bunch of entertainment dinosaurs. Four European nations opened inquiries into the competition and consumer protection issues raised by iTunes DRM. The latest WIPO treaty looks like it has died, killed by activist involvement. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Science fiction novelist; Blogger; Technology activist; Co-editor, Boing Boing - **Extract length:** 111 words - **Trajectory signals:** `memory_and_persistence` - **Source:** [Science fiction novelist; Blogger; Technology activist; Co-editor, Boing Boing](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11526) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-031 — Editor in Chief, Wired Magazine; Author, The Long Tail — Christopher J. Anderson > Metcalfe's Law says that value of a networks grows with the square of the number of nodes. Today's Web, which is as much about contributing as it is consuming — two-way links, as opposed to the old one-way networks of broadcast and traditional media — allows the same to apply to people. Connecting minds allows our collective intelligence to grow with each person who joins the global conversation. This information propagation process, which was once found in just a few cultures of shared knowledge, such as academic science, is now seen online in everything from hobbies to history. The result, I think, will be the fastest increasing in human knowledge in history. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Curator, TED conferences, TED Talks; author, TED Talks - **Extract length:** 112 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `machine_intelligence` - **Source:** [Editor in Chief, Wired Magazine; Author, The Long Tail](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11222) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-032 — Cultural Revolution Correspondent, Washington Post; Author, Radical Evolution — Joel Garreau > "It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog." - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Principal, The Garreau Group - **Extract length:** 103 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Cultural Revolution Correspondent, Washington Post; Author, Radical Evolution](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11375) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-033 — Physicist, MIT; Recipient, 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics; Author, Fantastic Realities — Frank Wilczek > In recent months a different, much weaker notion of what a "Theory of Everything" might accomplish has gained ground, largely inspired by developments in string theory. In this concept, the Theory provides a unique set of equations, but those equations that have many solutions, which are realized in different parts of the Universe. One speaks instead of a multiverse, composed of many domains, each forming a universe in itself, each with its own distinctive laws. Now even the fundamental—i.e., basic, irreducible—laws are beyond the power of the Theory to supply, since they vary from universe to universe. At this point the contrast between the grandeur of the words "Theory of Everything" and the meager information delivered becomes grotesque. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Physicist, MIT; Recipient, 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics; Author, Fundamentals - **Extract length:** 118 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Physicist, MIT; Recipient, 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics; Author, Fantastic Realities](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11540) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-034 — Psychologist, London School of Economics; Author, Seeing Red — Nicholas Humphrey > If I had lived in the year 1007, and had been asked what I looked forward to for my descendants in the next millennium, I might have imagined many wonderful possibilities. But I would not — because I could not — have imagined the music of Mozart, the painting of Rothko, the sonnets of Shakespeare, the novels of Dostoyevsky. . . It means I would have failed to see one of the best reasons of all for being optimistic: which is, the power of human artistic genius to astonish us again and again. I will not make the same mistake twice. So let me say straight out, in 2007 I hope and expect that the best is yet to come: that greater works of art than any the world has ever seen will be created by human beings not far ahead of us — works of presently unimaginable aesthetic and moral force. And, mind you, it will not require genetic modification, computer hybridization, high-tech brain enhancement or whatever — it will simply require that we continue to be the kind of people that we are. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Emeritus Professor of Psychology, London School of Economics; Visiting Professor of Philosophy, New College of the Humanities; Senior Member, Darwin College, Cambridge; Author, Soul Dust - **Extract length:** 185 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values`, `consciousness_and_identity`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation` - **Source:** [Psychologist, London School of Economics; Author, Seeing Red](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11237) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-035 — Psychologist; Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Harvard University — Mahzarin Banaji > Most importantly though, we unravel existing beliefs and preferences because we wish them to be in line with our intentions and aspirations and recognize that they are not. I see evidence of this everywhere—small acts to be the person one wishes to be rather than the person one is—and it is the constant attempt at this alignment that gives me optimism. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Department Chair; Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Department of Psychology, Harvard University; Co-author (with Anthony Greenwald), Blind Spot - **Extract length:** 61 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Psychologist; Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Harvard University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11390) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-036 — Evolutionary Biologist, Charles Simonyi Professor For The Understanding Of Science, Oxford University; Author, The God Delusion — Richard Dawkins > I am optimistic that the physicists of our species will complete Einstein's dream and discover the final theory of everything before superior creatures, evolved on another world, make contact and tell us the answer. I am optimistic that, although the theory of everything will bring fundamental physics to a convincing closure, the enterprise of physics itself will continue to flourish, just as biology went on growing after Darwin solved its deep problem. I am optimistic that the two theories together will furnish a totally satisfying naturalistic explanation for the existence of the universe and everything that's in it including ourselves. And I am optimistic that this final scientific enlightenment will deal an overdue deathblow to religion and other juvenile superstitions. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Evolutionary Biologist; Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, Oxford; Author, Books Do Furnish a Life - **Extract length:** 120 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Evolutionary Biologist, Charles Simonyi Professor For The Understanding Of Science, Oxford University; Author, The God Delusion](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11253) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-037 — Geochronologist Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley — Garniss Curtis > I believe that the growth of these gigantic stromatolitic forms gradually decreased the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mars leading to progressive cooling and finally freezing conditions that ended the growth of the three geomorphic forms and the mostly warm, wet Noachian era. The following cold, dry Hesperian and Amazonian eras for the next 3 plus Gyr to the present time have none of these geomorphic forms, proving they needed water for their formation, but water with some other essential materials to cause their growth. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Geochronologist Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley - **Extract length:** 86 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting` - **Source:** [Geochronologist Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11407) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-038 — Computer Scientist and Musician — Jaron Lanier > That aspect of the brain which is optimized to control the many degrees of freedom of body motion is also well suited to controlling the many degrees of freedom of a superlative programming and design environment of the future. It is likely, by the way, that the tongue would turn out to be just as important in this type of communication as it is in language, for it is the richest output device of the human body. (I have already done some work on through-the-cheek tongue measurement to test this idea.) - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Computer Scientist; Musician; Author, Who Owns The Future? - **Extract length:** 91 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `machine_intelligence`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Computer Scientist and Musician](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11268) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-039 — Physicist, Computer Scientist; Chairman, Applied Minds, Inc.; Author, The Pattern on the Stone — W. Daniel Hillis > We are so accustomed to watching the explosion of human growth and development that it is easy to imagine that this is normal. It is not. We are the first generation in history that has watched the human population double in our own lifetime, and no future generation is likely to see it again. All of those blights of growth that we have come to accept—crowded cites, jammed roads, expanding suburbs, fish-depleted oceans, and tree-stripped forests—are all symptoms of a one-of-a-kind surge in human expansion. Soon they will be just memories. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Physicist, Computer Scientist, Co-Founder, Applied Invention.; Author, The Pattern on the Stone - **Extract length:** 91 words - **Trajectory signals:** `memory_and_persistence`, `machine_intelligence`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Physicist, Computer Scientist; Chairman, Applied Minds, Inc.; Author, The Pattern on the Stone](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11422) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-040 — Entrepreneur in Action, Sequoia Capital — Jason Calacanis > The most successful businesspeople in the world have decided to put their brains and bank accounts toward fixing the world, leaving politics and politicians on the sidelines. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Richard Branson, John Doerr, and Pierre Omidyar — among many others — are demonstrating that the true goal of winning is giving. The brass ring has moved from private aviation and mega-yachts, to making a mega-pledge at Bill Clinton's annual summit. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Internet Entrepreneur; Angel Investor - **Extract length:** 72 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Entrepreneur in Action, Sequoia Capital](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11283) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-041 — Chief Executive, Medical Research Council;Waynflete Professor of Physiology, University of Oxford — Colin Blakemore > Then, given these absolutist arguments, why should I be optimistic about a change in attitude to stem cell research in 2007? Because morality is, for all but the most stubbornly impervious to practical evidence, a matter of utilitarian dialectic. Yesterday's moral outrage has a way of becoming today's necessary evil and tomorrow's common good. Just as with climate change, what will cause a swing of attitude is the turning point of a mathematical function; in this case the shifting ratio of perceived benefit to theoretical cost. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Chief Executive, Medical Research Council;Waynflete Professor of Physiology, University of Oxford - **Extract length:** 86 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Chief Executive, Medical Research Council;Waynflete Professor of Physiology, University of Oxford](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11437) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-042 — Artificial Life Researcher; Creator of Lucy, a Robot Babay Orangutan; Author, Creation: Life and How to Make It. — Steve Grand > The single-electrode recordings of the equivalent elements in the brain have largely been replaced by system-wide recordings made by fMRI now, but at the moment we still don't know what any of it means because we have the wrong model in our heads. We need an "aha" moment akin to learning that the phosphor dots above belong to a TV set, upon which images of natural scenes are being projected. Once we know what the fundamental operating principles are, everything will start to make sense very quickly. Painstaking deduction won't reveal this to us; I think it will be the result of a lucky hunch. But the circumstances are in place for that inductive leap to happen soon, and I find that tremendously exciting. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Founder, Cyberlife Research; author, Creation: Life and How to Make It - **Extract length:** 124 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Artificial Life Researcher; Creator of Lucy, a Robot Babay Orangutan; Author, Creation: Life and How to Make It.](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11298) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-043 — Psychologist, Stanford University; Author, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil — Philip Zimbardo > When trying to understand human behavior that violates our expectations about how people are supposed to act, there is a learned tendency to "rush to the dispositional." We seek to explain behavior in terms of personal qualities of the actor, or agent of the action in question. In individualistic cultures this means searching for genetic, personality, or pathological characteristics that can be reasonably linked as explanatory constructs. It also has come to mean ignoring or giving insufficient weight to aspects of the behavioral context—situational variables—that may in fact be significant contributors to that action. Dramatists, philosophers, and historians, as well as clergy and physicians, all tend toward the dispositional and away from the situational in their views of human nature. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University; Author, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil - **Extract length:** 120 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Psychologist, Stanford University; Author, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11452) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-044 — Professor of Philosophy, Edinburgh University; Author, Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again — Andy Clark > Second, the biological brain is itself populated by a vast number of hidden 'zombie processes' that underpin the skills and capacities upon which successful behavior depends. There are, for example, a plethora of such unconscious processes involved in activities from grasping an object all the way to the flashes of insight that characterize much daily skilful problem-solving. Technology and drug based enhancements add, to that standard mix, still more processes whose basic operating principles are not available for conscious inspection and control. The patient using a brain-computer interface to control a wheelchair will not typically know just how it all works, or be able to reconfigure the interface or software at will. But in this respect too, the new equipment is simply on a par with much of the old. - **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:** 130 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `consciousness_and_identity`, `machine_intelligence` - **Source:** [Professor of Philosophy, Edinburgh University; Author, Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11313) - **Reminder status:** Promoted — [[reminders/Cybernetics/Human Intelligence Has Always Coevolved With Its Tools by Andy Clark|Human Intelligence Has Always Coevolved With Its Tools by Andy Clark]] ### EDGE2007-045 — Artist; Composer; Recording Producer: U2, Talking Heads, Paul Simon; Recording Artist — Brian Eno > If a single first instance of global governance proves successful, it will strengthen its appeal as a way of addressing other problems —such as weapons control, energy management, money-laundering, conflict resolution, people-trafficking, slavery, and poverty. It will become increasingly difficult for countries to stay outside of future treaties like Kyoto—partly because of international pressure but increasingly because of pressure from their own populations. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Artist; Composer; Recording Producer: U2, Coldplay, Talking Heads, Paul Simon; Recording Artist - **Extract length:** 63 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Artist; Composer; Recording Producer: U2, Talking Heads, Paul Simon; Recording Artist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11467) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-046 — Founder, Whole Earth Catalog, cofounder; The Well; cofounder, Global Business Network; Author, How Buildings Learn — Stewart Brand > Poverty in the megacities (over 10 million) and hypercities (over 20 million) of the developing world will be highly visible as the disaster it is. (It was worse out in the bush, only not as visible there. That's why people leave.) But the poor who were trapped in rural poverty create their own opportunity once they're in town by creating their own cities--- the "squatter cities" where one billion people now live. They recapitulate the creation of cities past by generating a seething informal economy in which everyone works. The dense slums, if they don't get bulldozed, eventually become part of the city proper and part of the formal economy. It takes decades. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Founder, the Whole Earth Catalog; Co-founder, The Well; Co-Founder, The Long Now Foundation, and Revive & Restore; Author, Whole Earth Discipline - **Extract length:** 113 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Founder, Whole Earth Catalog, cofounder; The Well; cofounder, Global Business Network; Author, How Buildings Learn](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11327) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-047 — Physicist, Dartmouth College; Author, The Prophet and the Astronomer — Marcelo Gleiser > My hope is that people will begin to see science as a vehicle for mutual understanding and for respecting life. The more we study life and its mechanisms, the more we realize how rare it is, how precious it is. Sure, there may be life elsewhere, and it may even be intelligent. However, even if this is the case, odds are we are still going to be stuck with ourselves, in this planet or our solar neighborhood, for quite some time. Either we learn that science teaches us humility and respect for life and the environment, or we exterminate this most precious cosmic jewel. I am optimistic that scientists will teach people these lessons, instead of simply try to rob them of their faith and offering nothing in return. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy, Dartmouth College; Author, The Island of Knowledge - **Extract length:** 129 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Physicist, Dartmouth College; Author, The Prophet and the Astronomer](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11482) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-048 — Archaeologist, University of Bradford; Author, The Buried Soul — Timothy Taylor > My optimism about skeuomorphs arises, as optimism often does, from former pessimism. I grew up with Alan Turing's unsettling vision of a future machine indistinguishable from a human in its reactions. Ray Kurzweil's provocative prediction of the impending 'singularity'—the point when computer intelligence would start to leave humans gasping in its intellectual wake—added to my fears. I actually began to worry that efforts to enculture my children with Shakespeare and Darwin, and even with spiritual and moral values, might be rendered peremptorily redundant by cold robotic Übermenschen. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Jan Eisner Professor of Archaeology, Comenius University in Bratislava; Author, The Artificial Ape - **Extract length:** 87 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `governance_control_and_values`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Archaeologist, University of Bradford; Author, The Buried Soul](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11162) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-049 — Psychologist; Director, Quality of Life Research Center, Claremont Graduate University; Author, Flow — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi > I am optimistic for the simple reason that given the incredible odds against the existence of brains that can ask such questions, of laptops on which to answer them, and so on — here we are, asking and answering! - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Psychologist; Director, Quality of Life Research Center, Claremont Graduate University; Author, Flow - **Extract length:** 39 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Psychologist; Director, Quality of Life Research Center, Claremont Graduate University; Author, Flow](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11343) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-050 — Computer Scientist, MIT Media Laboratory — Alex "Sandy" Pentland > Governance is also being transformed. Not only have the heads of governments been brought down by SMS-organized protests, but multilateral organizations such as the WTO have been brought to account as well. More subtle, but perhaps even more important, the traceable nature of digital transactions means that banking and government services offered by cell phone are more transparent and accountable than the older systems. An example of this capability in action is that governments such as India claim that the vast majority of captured terrorists have been identified through cell phone transactions. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Computer Science, MIT; Director, MIT Connection Science and Human Dynamics labs; Author, Social Physics - **Extract length:** 92 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Computer Scientist, MIT Media Laboratory](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11497) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-051 — Biologist; Climatologist, Stanford University; Author, Laboratory Earth — Stephen Schneider > First, what would constitute a "climate hole"? Perhaps, the 2003 Euro heat waves that killed some 35,000 well-heeled Europeans? Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans — connected to recent evidence that global warming should statistically increase top intensity tropical cyclones? Amazingly enough, despite all the pessimistic talk from environmental types about bio-geophysical "tipping points" in the climate system (e.g., shut down to the Gulf Stream, collapse of Greenland Ice sheet etc,), my optimistic half brain thinks the only clearly demonstrable "tipping phenomena" are psychological-political: the symbolic events of climate impacts just mentioned and the advent of a popular movie combined with a big change in attitudes about inventing our way out of global warming by some large corporations no longer lobbying to prevent policy — these include GE, BP, PG&E, Duke Energy, Wal-Mart and many others. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** climatologist, is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences - **Extract length:** 135 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Biologist; Climatologist, Stanford University; Author, Laboratory Earth](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11177) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-052 — Editor, Release 1.0; Trustee, Long Now Foundation; Author, Release 2.0 — Esther Dyson > Many of the venture capitalists I know are turning to environmental and energy investments; the more adventurous ones are looking at health care (not just drugs), low-end PCs, products for the masses. They are funding training schools in India — for-profit — rather than just donating to legacy universities in the US. The watch-word is "sustainability:" In plain English, that means making a profit so that more profit-seeking investors will enter and enlarge the market. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Investor; Chairman, EDventure Holdings; Executive Founder, Wellville; Author: Release 2.0 - **Extract length:** 75 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Editor, Release 1.0; Trustee, Long Now Foundation; Author, Release 2.0](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11344) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-053 — Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz; Author, Being No One — Thomas Metzinger > If global sociodynamics keeps on unfolding as it currently does, isn’t it likely that Europeans on their own will not stand a chance to change the overall trend? America is gone for good. How rational is it really—to still keep on believing that Europe as a whole will not only grasp the historical challenge, but eventually get its act together? I am optimistic that, once again, I will be dead wrong. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Theoretical Philosophy, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz; Adjunct Fellow, Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Study; Author, The Ego Tunnel - **Extract length:** 71 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz; Author, Being No One](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11019) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-054 — Social & Technology Network Topology Researcher; Adjunct Professor, NYU Graduate School of Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) — Clay Shirky > Evidence will continue to improve society, but slowly — this is long-view optimism. The use of evidence dragged the curious mind from the confusion of alchemy into the precision of chemistry in the historical blink of an eye, but its progress past the hard sciences has been considerably slower. Even accepting that evidence should shape our views is inconsistent with much human behavior. Everything from the belief in supernatural beings to deference to elders pushes against the idea that a single person, if he or she comes to understand the evidence, should be allowed to upend a millennium of cherished human belief. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Social & Technology Network Topology Researcher; Adjunct Professor, NYU Graduate School of Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP); Author, Cognitive Surplus - **Extract length:** 102 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Social & Technology Network Topology Researcher; Adjunct Professor, NYU Graduate School of Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP)](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10877) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-055 — Psychologist, New York University; Author, The Birth of the Mind — Gary Marcus > How to teach children to fish for themselves? I would start with a course in what cognitive scientists call metacognition, knowing about knowing, call it The Human Mind: A User's Guide, aimed at say, seventh-graders.. Instead of emphasizing facts, I'd expose students to the architecture of the mind, what it does well, and what it doesn't. And most important, how to cope with its limitations, to consider evidence in a more balanced way, to be sensitive to biases in our reasoning, and to make choices in ways that better suit our own long-term goals. Nobody ever taught me about these things in middle school (or even high school), but there's no reason why they couldn't be taught; in time, I expect they will. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Psychology, Director NYU Center for Language and Music; Author, Guitar Zero - **Extract length:** 123 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Psychologist, New York University; Author, The Birth of the Mind](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11045) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-056 — University of Vienna and Scientific Director, Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Austrian Academy of Sciences — Anton Zeilinger > I am optimistic about the future of technology. Here too we have hardly scratched the surface. With quantum information technology, mankind for the first time is entering a field of technology which, by all we know today, has not been used by Nature in evolution. I am convinced that most of the technology of the future will be of that kind. New ideas will be created and new technologies will be invented which only could come into existence because we invented them. There is no other road to making them happen. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Nobel laureate (2022 - Physics); Physicist, University of Vienna; Scientific Director, Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information; President, Austrian Academy of Sciences; Author, Dance of the Photons: From Einstein to Quantum Teleportation - **Extract length:** 91 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [University of Vienna and Scientific Director, Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Austrian Academy of Sciences](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10892) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-057 — Psychologist, MIT; Author, Evocative Objects: Things We Think With — Sherry Turkle > Young scientists are encouraged by a personal experience with an object they can understand and with which they can tinker. Playing with objects in their own way leads children to build a personal scientific style. There has been no simple migration to a new digital world. Children grow up in many worlds—they are seduced by the virtual, but always brought back to the physical, to the analog, and of course, to nature. - **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:** 72 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Psychologist, MIT; Author, Evocative Objects: Things We Think With](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11059) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-058 — Computer Scientist, UC Berkeley, School of Information — Marti Hearst > The design of a computer user interface can influence whether the outcome of an election is fair, a patient receives the right medicine, or a helicopter pilot makes a safe landing. Perhaps even more importantly, when technology is designed to mesh well with how people think and how they want to live, then it enhances and enriches their lives. Poorly designed interfaces that treat people inhumanely can contribute to the feelings of apprehension that people often associate with our technology-saturated world. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Computer Scientist, UC Berkeley, School of Information; Author, Search User Interfaces - **Extract length:** 81 words - **Trajectory signals:** `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `machine_intelligence`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Computer Scientist, UC Berkeley, School of Information](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10753) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-059 — Professor, Claremont McKenna College; Past-president, American Psychological Association; Author, Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities — Diane F. Halpern > In just the last year, bloggers destroyed some political careers (e.g., Mark Foley) and launched others (e.g., Barack Obama). Technology has changed the way we get information, compute and pay our taxes, keep diaries, do homework, stay in touch, read books, learn almost anything, conduct research, make purchases, compose music, find mates, run businesses, diagnose diseases, and more. At the click of a mouse, I can listen to rap music from Poland or find an organ donor. Technology has enabled all of this and more. I believe that it will also profoundly change how we think about each other and that, for the most part, the change will be for the good. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor, Claremont McKenna College; Past-president, American Psychological Association; Author, Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities - **Extract length:** 112 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Professor, Claremont McKenna College; Past-president, American Psychological Association; Author, Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10906) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-060 — Chief Curator, Utah Museum of Natural History; Associate Professor, University of Utah; Host, Dinosaur Planet TV series — Scott Sampson > Nevertheless, any optimism with regard to a growing environmental consciousness must be tempered with a double dose of reality. First, environmental changes are occurring at rates that are entirely unknown in human experience. To give just one case in point, the rate of species extinctions is about 1000 times greater than has been typical in earth history. Indeed the current human-induced mass extinction is on track to obliterate on the order of one half of all species on earth by the close of this century, with unpredictable (and perhaps unimaginable) ecological consequences. Thus, we have little time to make this transformational leap. The next few decades will be pivotal. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** President & CEO, Science World British Columbia; Dinosaur paleontologist and science communicator; Author, How To Raise A Wild Child - **Extract length:** 109 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Chief Curator, Utah Museum of Natural History; Associate Professor, University of Utah; Host, Dinosaur Planet TV series](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11073) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-061 — Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Seed — Adam Bly > Witness, for example, the agendas of the World Economic Forum, the Clinton Global Initiative, or the African Union Summit; science has made a well-timed transition from a topic of peripheral interest to the leaders of the world to one inextricably tied to issues of development, global health, innovation, competitiveness, and energy. At a time when science is spurring markets, arts and ideas, it is now making its way into our halls of power with considerable momentum. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Head of Advanced Analytics, Spotify - **Extract length:** 76 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Seed](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10767) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-062 — Professor of Psychology, Provost, Senior Vice President, Tufts University — Jamshed Bharucha > One is the brain drain myth, according to which the countries of origin are being robbed of talent. Take the case of the large numbers of graduate students recruited from India over the past three or so decades—mostly in science and engineering. The dire warnings about a brain drain have proven false. These expatriate Indians have helped fuel India's emerging economy by leveraging their American training and global experience. This group also has formed a bridge between India and the U.S. that is providing the two countries with new economic opportunities as well as a stable political relationship. We are all better off when talent is realized to its fullest—even if it crosses borders. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Psychologist; President Emeritus, Cooper Union - **Extract length:** 114 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation` - **Source:** [Professor of Psychology, Provost, Senior Vice President, Tufts University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10920) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-063 — Physicist, Arizona State University; Author, The Cosmic Jackpot — Paul Davies > A one-way ticket to Mars is not an invitation for a suicide mission. Adequate supplies and a nuclear power supply can be sent on ahead, and every two years more supplies, and more astronauts, will be dispatched to the new colony. Mars is relatively inhospitable, but it is far more congenial than outer space. It has all the raw materials needed for a colony to eventually become self-sufficient. To be sure, life would be cramped and uncomfortable for the trail-blazers, but so it was for Antarctic explorers a century ago. - **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:** 90 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Physicist, Arizona State University; Author, The Cosmic Jackpot](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11088) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-064 — Computer Scientist, Brandeis University — Jordan Pollack > I have a predictive sketch for how intelligent machines might arrive. My definition of a robot is any device—controlled by software—interacting with the physical world. An economically viable robot is such a system that earns a consistent return on investment (ROI). The ATM, the ink-jet printer, and the disk drive are today's omnipresent robots, they just don't appear as the robots of science fiction. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor and Chairman of Computer Science, Brandeis University - **Extract length:** 64 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence` - **Source:** [Computer Scientist, Brandeis University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10781) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-065 — Philosopher and Researcher, Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique; Author, Text-E: Text in the Age of the Internet — Gloria Origgi > More and more European children grow up multilingual. They are unlike immigrants born in one culture and having to grow up in another. They are unlike children growing up in a monolingual, monocultural family that happen to be located in a wider multicultural environment. For the children I am talking about, cultural and linguistic diversity is not just outside them in the society at large, it is part of their own, implanted in their minds as novel kind of cultural identity. Multilingualism is going to become an existential condition in Europe, and this is really good news for a continent in which national identities have been so powerful and have caused so much pain and tragedies in the past. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Philosopher and Researcher, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris; Author, Reputation: What it is and Why it Matters - **Extract length:** 119 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity` - **Source:** [Philosopher and Researcher, Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique; Author, Text-E: Text in the Age of the Internet](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10934) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-066 — Student, MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms; Researcher, Internet 0, Fab Lab Thinner Clients for South Africa, Conformal Computing — David Dalrymple > From this point of view, what holds back the education of children in the developing world isn't so much a lack of school-houses or qualified teachers, but a lack of access to technology and communications. Without the Internet, there's no good place for these children to "fish" for knowledge — the local elders probably don't have a Periodic Table of Elements on the hut wall. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Research affiliate, MIT Media Lab - **Extract length:** 65 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Student, MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms; Researcher, Internet 0, Fab Lab Thinner Clients for South Africa, Conformal Computing](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11102) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-067 — Scientist; Spanish Television Presenter; Author, The Happiness Trip — Eduardo Punset > The brain does not see a thing. Most of its energy is consumed predicting in darkness. At last we understand why we only see what we want to see, just as the moon looms larger on the earthly horizon than above. Now we know that visible light is only a tiny fraction of the whole spectrum. We can no longer be sure of anything. So we need not fight against somebody's views nor die for our own convictions. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Scientist; Spanish Television Presenter; Author, The Happiness Trip - **Extract length:** 78 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation` - **Source:** [Scientist; Spanish Television Presenter; Author, The Happiness Trip](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10794) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-068 — Columnist, Vanity Fair; Author, Autumn of the Moguls — Michael Wolff > The good news where I come from, as a prisoner here in the American media business, is all about entropy. The massive and ridiculous systems that we've built to control and market expression and culture, with their dissipations of so many people's energy, are deteriorating and coming apart. Everyday the media—a much more vexing monolith than religion and God—takes another transforming step from consolidation and uniformity toward uncertainty and chaos. This is not just because new technologies are revolutionizing production and distribution—though that's no small part of this creative destruction—but as much because of the inevitable disorder and randomness of closed systems. What's optimistic is that so many strategists and consultants and bureaucrats and moguls have not been able to maintain control and have been shown to be as clueless as everybody else (this is true, come to think of it, not just at Time Warner and Viacom, but at the Pentagon). Breakdown can be a positive development. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Author, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House; Columnist and contributor, USA Today, The Hollywood Reporter, British GQ - **Extract length:** 158 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Columnist, Vanity Fair; Author, Autumn of the Moguls](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10948) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-069 — Science Editor, The Daily Telegraph; Coauthor, After Dolly — Roger Highfield > I am quietly optimistic that in the wake of years of hype over the practical significance of gene discoveries, fusion power, magic bullets, superconductivity, gene therapy, cures for ageing, and embryonic stem cells*, the public will become more pessimistic about the practical benefits of discoveries made in the lab and more appreciative of what science is really about — basic curiousity, rationality and the never-ending dialogue between ideas and experiments. With luck, the public will spend more time gazing up at the blue skies of science and not down at the brown torrent of parochial and humdrum expectations about what science can do for them. Science does not have to be useful, save to put forward useful models of how nature works. Science does not have to cure disease. Science does not have to make us live to 120. Science does not have to make money. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Director, External Affairs, Science Museum Group; Co-author (with Martin Nowak), SuperCooperators - **Extract length:** 146 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Science Editor, The Daily Telegraph; Coauthor, After Dolly](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11117) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-070 — Neuroscientist; Director, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Lab, UCLA — Marco Iacoboni > The good news is that the awareness of neurobiological mechanisms that make us wired for empathy is entering the public discourse through the activities of the third culture. This awareness won't go away and will seep through the reflective level of our mental processes. Indeed, people seem to have an intuitive understanding of how neural mechanisms for empathy work. It seems that people 'recognize' how their brain works, when they are told about it. People can finally articulate what they already 'knew' at a pre-reflective level. My optimism is that this explicit level of understanding of our empathic nature will at some point dissolve the massive belief systems that dominate our societies and that threaten to destroy us. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Neuroscientist; Professor of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA; Author, Mirroring People - **Extract length:** 118 words - **Trajectory signals:** `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `consciousness_and_identity`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting` - **Source:** [Neuroscientist; Director, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Lab, UCLA](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10808) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-071 — Consultant, Adaptive Optics; Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, University of Utah — Gregory Cochran > Right now the human race uses about 13 trillion watts: the solar cells required to produce that much power would take up less than a fifth of one percent of the Earth's land surface—remember that the Earth intercepts more solar energy in an hour than the human race uses in a year. That's a lot of solar cell acreage, but it's affordable as long as they make themselves. We could put them in deserts—in fact, they'd all fit inside the Rub' al Khali, the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia. As I understand it, we like depending on the Saudis for energy. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Consultant; Adaptive Optics and Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, University of Utah; Coauthor (with Henry Harpending), The 10,000 Year Explosion - **Extract length:** 101 words - **Trajectory signals:** `memory_and_persistence`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Consultant, Adaptive Optics; Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, University of Utah](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10962) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-072 — Mathematician, Computer Scientist; CyberPunk Pioneer; Novelist; Author, Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul — Rudy Rucker > A useful corollary is that any piece of brute matter will be a computer just as it is. That is, once we can reach into the inner self of an object, we'll become able to program the behavior of things like rocks or log—without our having to attach any kind of microprocessor as an intermediary. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Mathematician; Computer Scientist; Cyberpunk Pioneer; Novelist, Infinity and the Mind, Postsingular, and (with Bruce Sterling) Transreal Cyberpunk. - **Extract length:** 55 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `machine_intelligence` - **Source:** [Mathematician, Computer Scientist; CyberPunk Pioneer; Novelist; Author, Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11131) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-073 — Human Genome Decoder; Director, The J. Craig Venter Institute — J. Craig Venter > For most scientists the evidence for evolution, regardless of its origins, has been overwhelming. The fossil record was sufficient evidence for most, but now with genome sequencing information from all branches of life, including from some of our closest relatives like Neanderthals, chimps and rhesus monkeys, the results should be clear cut for anyone whose thinking is not overly clouded by a "belief" system. - **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:** 64 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Human Genome Decoder; Director, The J. Craig Venter Institute](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10822) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-074 — Technology Forecaster; Consulting Associate Professor, Stanford University — Paul Saffo > Inevitably, the greatest impact of our calendric angst occurs after the triggering date has passed. The year 2000 is still affects—perhaps even dominates—the zeitgeist today. Eschatologically-obsessed believers like Muqtada al-Sadr stand astride events in Iraq, convinced by the calendar that the Madhi redeemer will finally reveal himself. Closer to home, an astonishingly large population of Americans are equally convinced that the Apocalypse will arrive at any moment, and there is little doubt that fundamentalist apocalyptic beliefs directly affect US policy. There also is no shortage of millennially-inspired optimists (some whose answers are on this site) confident that the wonder machines of science and technology will allow us to live forever, power our devices with puffs of hydrogen, banish terrorism, and usher in a new age of human understanding and world peace. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Technology Forecaster; Consulting Associate Professor, Stanford University - **Extract length:** 131 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Technology Forecaster; Consulting Associate Professor, Stanford University](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10976) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-075 — Physicist, UC Irvine; Author, Deep Time — Gregory Benford > We hope that a favorable experiment could change the terms of the global warming debate for the better. We must think of other methods of trimming the effects of warming, not just a War on Carbon that will take a century to win. As economist Robert Samuelson recently said, "The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral crusade when it's really an engineering problem. The inconvenient truth is that if we don't solve the engineering problem, we're helpless." - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy, UC-Irvine; Novelist, The Berlin Project - **Extract length:** 84 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Physicist, UC Irvine; Author, Deep Time](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11146) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-076 — Physicist, currently at CERN — Maria Spiropulu > Because ~3.5 Billion CHF [and I don't know exactly how many FTEs for how many years of how many experts and indeed in many disciplines of science, construction and technology] later [and yes we can debate the exact number, however as Jack Sandweiss taught me, "big" money for science is just a perception really] we are getting there. Where "there" is the ever awaited super-collider. A machine that attracts the imagination and intellectual focus of physicists and people at large alike. Being built under the Jura on the border of Switzerland and France the Large Hadron Collider is a serious reason of optimism for experimental science. It is the first time that the human exploration and technology will offer reproducible "hand-made" 14 TeV collisions of protons with protons. The physics of such interactions, the analysis of the data from the debris of these collisions [the highest energy such] are to be seen in the coming year. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Shang-Yi Ch’en Professor of Physics, California Institute of Technology; Founder, AQT/INQNET - **Extract length:** 156 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence` - **Source:** [Physicist, currently at CERN](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10836) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-077 — Social and cognitive scientist; Directeur de Recherche, CNRS, Paris; Author, Rethinking Symbolism — Dan Sperber > Had the question been, "What are you pessimistic about?" I would have answered: If there is any progress in human wisdom (and, yes, I suppose there is) it is pathetically slow, while ever faster technological advances provide the means for self-righteous, unwise people with power, wealth, or charisma to cause greater and greater havoc. I don't alas have any equally broad and compelling reasons to be optimistic about the future of humankind. Humans, however, are full of surprises, many of them excellent, arousing new hopes every day. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Social and Cognitive Scientist; CEU Budapest and CNRS Paris; Co-author (with Deirdre Wilson), Meaning and Relevance; and (with Hugo Mercier), The Enigma of Reason - **Extract length:** 87 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Social and cognitive scientist; Directeur de Recherche, CNRS, Paris; Author, Rethinking Symbolism](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10991) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-078 — Director, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); Chief Technical Officer of iRobot Corporation; author Flesh and Machines — Rodney A. Brooks > By the beginning of the twenty second century mankind will have significantly raised the probability of its long term survival by spreading its genetic material beyond Earth. That genetic material may be significantly modified from the current model but that is another and different story. The point is that we will have spread ourselves to more than one little tiny ball in our solar system, and will continue to step to other systems and throughout the galaxy over subsequent centuries. - **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:** 80 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Director, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); Chief Technical Officer of iRobot Corporation; author Flesh and Machines](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10850) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-079 — Research Professor, Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University; Author, Why We Love — Helen Fisher > Parents may have started to arrange their children's marriages when the brain began to develop some two million years ago. But in those few hunting and gathering societies that still survive, parents only initiate the first wedding of a son or daughter. Moreover, this contract is flexible. If the callow newlyweds are not happy with their match, they pick up their few belongings and walk home. The contract has been honored and parents are pleased to see their youth again. The young go on to choose their next partner for themselves. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Biological Anthropologist, Rutgers University; Author, Why Him? Why Her? How to Find and Keep Lasting Love - **Extract length:** 91 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation` - **Source:** [Research Professor, Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University; Author, Why We Love](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11005) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-080 — Physicist, MIT; Author, FAB — Neil Gershenfeld > I expect that scientific productivity will always be very non-uniformly distributed, with disproportionate contributions from a small number of remarkable people, but the sample size for finding and fostering those people can be improved by a few billion or so. There's a grand feedback loop ready to be closed, between the content and organization of scientific invention. Many of today's most compelling new questions are still tackled with old institutional models; it's ironic that religion has had its Reformation but that the role of a research university would be recognizable to a medieval monk. The future that I'm optimistic about is one in which the creation as well as consumption of scientific knowledge is potentially accessible to anyone. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Physicist, Director, MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms; Co-author, Designing Reality - **Extract length:** 118 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Physicist, MIT; Author, FAB](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10863) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-081 — Computational Neuroscientist, Salk Institute, Coauthor, The Computational Brain — Terrence J. Sejnowski > Neuroscientists have discovered that dopamine neurons, found in the brains of all vertebrates, are central to reward learning. The transient responses of dopamine neurons signal to the brain predictions for future reward, which are used to guide behavior and regulate synaptic plasticity. The dopamine responses have the same properties as the temporal difference learning algorithm used in TD-Gammon. Reinforcement learning was dismissed years ago as too weak a learner to handle the complexity of cognition. This belief needs to be re-evaluated in the light of the successes of TD-Gammon and learning algorithms in other areas of AI. - **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:** 97 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Computational Neuroscientist, Salk Institute, Coauthor, The Computational Brain](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10577) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-082 — Neurobiologist and Psychiatrist, University of California San Francisco; Author, Better Than Prozac — Samuel Barondes > Once this was established, scientists began searching for the genes that are involved. The main thing we have learned so far is that variants of quite a few different genes (maybe dozens or even more) may each increase the risk of developing one of these disorders; and that several (or more) of these variants must work together in a particular person to produce an appreciable increase in risk. Because so many combinations of gene variants may each produce the same pattern of mental illness, it has proved to be very difficult to identify any one of them with the techniques that identified the single genes that cause some other disorders, such as rare forms of Alzheimer’s disease. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Neurobiology and Psychiatry, UCSF; Author, Making Sense of People - **Extract length:** 117 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Neurobiologist and Psychiatrist, University of California San Francisco; Author, Better Than Prozac](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10279) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-083 — Evolutionary Psychologist, University of New Mexico; Author, The Mating Mind — Geoffrey Miller > A great ideological war is raging between the Godless—people like me, who trust life—and the Gutless—the talking heads of the extreme, religious right, who fear death, and fear the Godless, and fear ongoing life in the future when they no longer exist. I'm also optimistic about the outcome of this war, because people respect guts and integrity. People want moral role models who can show them how to live good lives and die good deaths. People want to believe that they are participating in something vastly greater and more wonderful than their solipsism. Science quenches that thirst far more effectively, in my experience, than any supernatural teat sought by the Gutless. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Evolutionary psychologist, NYU Stern Business School and University of New Mexico; author of The Mating Mind and Spent - **Extract length:** 111 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Evolutionary Psychologist, University of New Mexico; Author, The Mating Mind](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10352) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-084 — Professor Emeritus, Senior Research Scientist, Department of Chemistry, New York University; Author, Planetary Dreams — Robert Shapiro > As no firm evidence exists that supports or denies this package of gloom, we are not obliged to purchase it. A different scientific position holds that the generation of life is written into the laws that govern the universe. If a limited set of environmental requirements are satisfied—a supply of useful energy, fertile material to absorb and use the energy, and a fluid medium to support the transaction, then life will emerge. In the words of biologist Stuart Kauffman: "If all this is true, life is vastly more probable than we have supposed. Not only are we at home in the universe, but we are far more likely to share it with unknown companions." - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Senior Research Scientist, New York University; Author, Planetary Dreams - **Extract length:** 114 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Professor Emeritus, Senior Research Scientist, Department of Chemistry, New York University; Author, Planetary Dreams](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10724) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-085 — Physicist, Institute of Advanced Study, Author, Disturbing the Universe — Freeman Dyson > I am especially optimistic just now because of a seminal discovery that was made recently by comparing genomes of different species. David Haussler and his colleagues at UC Santa Cruz discovered a small patch of DNA which they call HAR1, short for Human Accelerated Region 1. This patch appears to be strictly conserved in the genomes of mouse, rat, chicken and chimpanzee, which means that it must have been performing an essential function that was unchanged for about three hundred million years from the last common ancestor of birds and mammals until today. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Physicist, Institute of Advanced Study; Author, Disturbing the Universe; Maker of Patterns - **Extract length:** 93 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Physicist, Institute of Advanced Study, Author, Disturbing the Universe](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10466) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-086 — Editor-in Chief, Nature — Philip Campbell > Turning to a dictionary I confirm that optimism is either "a doctrine that this world is the best possible world" or" an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome" (both from Webster). An attitude, therefore, of questionable robustness, and idiotically dangerous in some circumstances. But amongst several similar definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary I also find something less loaded: "Hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something". This permits optimism also to be rational. - **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:** 90 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Editor-in Chief, Nature](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10589) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-087 — Psychologist and Neuroscientist, University of Maryland; Author, Laughter — Robert Provine > Things could always be worse. Is this a cause for optimism? And if so, is this a form of optimism worth having — a wimpy, agnostic, non-committal, damn-with-faint-praise kind of optimism? Quite the contrary. It’s a rough-and-ready, rustic kind of optimism. This optimism is suited for everyday life and doesn’t fold under pressure. We have all heard of the "grass is greener" syndrome. This is its "grass is browner" counterpart, the achievable anecdote for broken dreams, and bolster of the status quo. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Author, Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond - **Extract length:** 82 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Psychologist and Neuroscientist, University of Maryland; Author, Laughter](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10286) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-088 — Philosopher, Harvard University; Author, Betraying Spinoza — Rebecca Newberger Goldstein > Sharp polarities between clashing points of view are wreaking all sorts of havoc in the world right now. Perhaps for many of us the divide that cuts closest to the quick is that between science, reason, and logic, on the one hand, and sectarianism, faith, and religion, on the other. My optimism is anchored to one aspect of human nature: We have the capacity to understand one another. Evolution has bequeathed us a sketchy folk psychology, just as it has a sketchy folk physics. We come equipped with the understanding that we are engaged with others who manifest propositional attitudes—beliefs, desires, regrets, dreads, hopes: the whole gamut. We come equipped, too, with skills for discovering what those propositional attitudes of others might be. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Philosopher, Novelist; Recipient, 2014 National Humanities Medal; Author, Plato at the Googleplex; 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction - **Extract length:** 123 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Philosopher, Harvard University; Author, Betraying Spinoza](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10360) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-089 — Science Writer; Consultant; Lecturer, Copenhagen; Author, The Generous Man — Tor Nørretranders > Boom! But then came the dot-com crash and 9/11. The liberating force of the internet was still there, even if hopeful and greedy investors didn't make money on it (but as we now know, it was released by the Open Source movement and phenomena like Web 2.0). Despite terrorism, the safety situation has not really changed in any quantitative sense. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Writer; Speaker; Thinker, Copenhagen, Denmark - **Extract length:** 60 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Science Writer; Consultant; Lecturer, Copenhagen; Author, The Generous Man](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10739) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-090 — Psychiatrist, University of Michigan; Coauthor, Why We Get Sick — Randolph Nesse > The tendency to think optimism is superior to pessimism is a deep-rooted illusion. Optimism is useful in propitious situations. Pessimism is useful in dangerous situations. For the fortunate, life now is vastly safer and more secure than it was, so pessimism is less necessary. But unintended consequences of blocking pessimism are likely. Already thousands of employees are subjected to motivational exercises to foster positive thinking. What will happen when we all can choose to feel positive most of the time? The world will be better in many ways, and worse in others that are hard to predict. - **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:** 97 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Psychiatrist, University of Michigan; Coauthor, Why We Get Sick](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10477) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-091 — Physicist, University of Pennsylvania; Author: Faust In Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics — Gino Segre > A unified understanding or so-called "theory of everything" has long been sought. The standard model that emerged in the 1970s provided a very significant step forward but left undetermined some 20 parameters: the values of the six quark and six lepton masses, various couplings etc. Initially it was hoped that string theory, aside from a unification of forces with quantum gravity, would determine the values of these parameters. That dream has not been realized. - **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:** 74 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Physicist, University of Pennsylvania; Author: Faust In Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10601) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-092 — Psychologist, Harvard University; Author, Wet Mind — Stephen M. Kosslyn > Third, the line between animate and inanimate information processing is becoming increasingly blurry as research in multiple fields proceeds apace. I expect that engineers will continue to press forward, designing increasingly powerful machines to help us extend our intelligence. For example, some people carry computers with them everywhere they go, and treat Google as an extension of their own knowledge bases. Or, in my case, my PDA extends my organizational ability enormously. We soon will have a wide variety of mechanical helpmates. The distinction between what goes on in the head and what relies on external devices is becoming more subtle and nuanced, and in so doing human intelligence is being extended. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Founding Dean, Minerva Schools at the Keck Graduate Institute - **Extract length:** 112 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `consciousness_and_identity` - **Source:** [Psychologist, Harvard University; Author, Wet Mind](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10293) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-093 — Biologist; Geographer, UCLA; Author, Collapse — Jared Diamond > I am cautiously optimistic about the state of the world, because: 1. Big businesses sometimes conclude that what is good for the long-term future of humanity is also good for their bottom line (cf. Wal-Mart's recent decision to shift their seafood purchases entirely to certified sustainable fisheries within the next three to five years). 2. Voters in democracy sometimes make good choices and avoid bad choices (cf. some recent elections in a major First World country). - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Geography, University of California Los Angeles; Author, Upheaval - **Extract length:** 76 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Biologist; Geographer, UCLA; Author, Collapse](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10379) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-094 — Feuilleton (Arts & Ideas) Editor, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Munich — Andrian Kreye > If a nation purposely kept in the dark about an imminent danger for so long manages to overcome public inertia and become acutely aware of a complex issue like global warming in the span of two years, it means that the power of reason is ultimately able to overcome the forces of ignorance driven by economic interests and religious dogma. This is a universally optimistic outlook on history. And not to forget that this ability to swiftly react as a collective is still most important in the US. The number of leading research facilities, the economic power, the pioneering spirit and entrepreneurial verve put the US in a leadership position that can affect not just global affairs, but down the line maybe even the weather. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Editor-at-large of the German Daily Newspaper, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Munich - **Extract length:** 125 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Feuilleton (Arts & Ideas) Editor, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Munich](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10488) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-095 — Neuroscientist, Chairman, Board of Directors, Human Science Center and Department of Medical Psychology, Munich University, Germany; Author, Mindworks — Ernst Pöppel > Since the question is in "edge world" it has thought implicitly day and night in my brain what I could be optimistic about, (on the explicit level I had to do also some other things). Frankly speaking with respect to the "big questions" nothing came to the surface of my mind. Can I be optimistic as a scientist or as a citizen about such questions like: Can we come to sustainable peace? Will we really solve one day the question how our brain functions? Are we going to win the battle against diseases? Will it once be possible to be free from prejudices? Etc, etc. The answer is an emphatic "no". There is no reason to be optimistic about such "big questions". - **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:** 122 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation` - **Source:** [Neuroscientist, Chairman, Board of Directors, Human Science Center and Department of Medical Psychology, Munich University, Germany; Author, Mindworks](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10614) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-096 — Cosmologist, Tufts University; Author, Many Worlds In One — Alexander Vilenkin > There is a limit to how far we can see into the universe. Our cosmic horizon is set by the distance traveled by light since the big bang. More distant objects cannot be observed, because their light has not yet reached the Earth. But of course the universe does not end at the horizon, and the question is what lies beyond. Is it more of the same — more galaxies, more stars, or could it be that remote parts of the universe are very different from what we see around here? I am optimistic that we will be able to answer this question and understand the structure of the universe as a whole, even though we can observe only a small part of it. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Cosmology at Tufts University - **Extract length:** 124 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Cosmologist, Tufts University; Author, Many Worlds In One](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10300) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-097 — Director, the Center for Science Writings, Stevens Institute of Technology; Author, Rational Mysticism — John Horgan > Many people find my optimism naive, if not delusional. Last semester, I taught a class called "War and Human Nature," and my students polled classmates on the following question: "Do you think humanity will ever stop fighting wars once and for all time?" Of the 205 respondents, 185 replied "No"; 20 said "Yes" or "Maybe. " Several of the "optimists" added comments like "Yes, war will end when the human race will end," and "Yes, because in the future the human species will unite to fight alien species. " - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Director, Center for Science Writings, Stevens Institute of Technology - **Extract length:** 89 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Director, the Center for Science Writings, Stevens Institute of Technology; Author, Rational Mysticism](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10388) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-098 — Computer Scientist, Yale University; Chief Scientist, Mirror Worlds Technologies; Author, Drawing Life — David Gelernter > Technologists who blandly assume that hardware will (somehow) keep getting better while software stays frozen in time are looking wronger every month. In the empty-computer world of the near future, your information assets have all been bundled-up, encrypted and launched into geosynchronous orbit in the Cybersphere; computers are interchangeable devices for tuning in information. (If computers are so cheap, why does everyone need to carry one around with him? We don't make you carry a desk and chairs around with you; we can afford to provide chairs and flat surfaces wherever you need them.) - **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:** 94 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Computer Scientist, Yale University; Chief Scientist, Mirror Worlds Technologies; Author, Drawing Life](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10499) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-099 — Quantum Mechanical Engineer, MIT, Author, Programming the Universe — Seth Lloyd > I'm also optimistic about the future. It is well within our power as a species to avert the environmental catastrophe envisaged in the previous paragraph. Prudent investment in carbon conserving technologies and economic strategies can postpone or prevent entirely the more extreme consequences of global warming. I am hopeful that policy makers will realize that relatively small sacrifices made voluntarily now, can prevent much larger, involuntary sacrifices later. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Quantum Mechanical Engineering, MIT; Author, Programming the Universe - **Extract length:** 68 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Quantum Mechanical Engineer, MIT, Author, Programming the Universe](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10626) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-100 — Research Associate, Psychology, Harvard University; Author, The Alex Studies — Irene Pepperberg > Like some other respondents, I'm not particularly optimistic at the moment. Human civilization, however, seems to proceed in cycles overall, and I believe that we are due—even if not quickly enough for my tastes—for a new positive cycle. Every Golden Age—the flowering of reason and good—has been followed by a withering, a decay, a rotting, a descent into superstition, prejudice, greed (pick your own favorite ill); somehow, though, the seeds of the next pinnacle begin their growth and ascent, seemingly finding nourishment in the detritus left by the past. A particular civilization may end, but new ones rise to take its place. I'm optimistic that the current nadir in which we find ourselves (e.g., a world mostly heedless of ongoing genocides, global warming, poverty, etc…) or toward which we see ourselves heading will lead to a renaissance, a new enlightenment…a profound, global shift in the world view for the better. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Research Associate & Lecturer, Harvard; Author, Alex & Me - **Extract length:** 150 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Research Associate, Psychology, Harvard University; Author, The Alex Studies](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10308) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-101 — Psychologist and Skeptic; Author, Consciousness: An Introduction — Susan Blackmore > A second step then becomes possible. That is, the organisms find new ways of copying information. This creates a second replicator and starts another evolutionary process, building on the first. This happened on earth when just one species, humans, became able to imitate each others' behaviour with sufficiently high fidelity to create a new replicator, memes. These memes (the behaviours, habits, and skills that were copied) evolved slowly at first and then faster and faster, creating our languages, social institutions, and complex culture. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Psychologist; Visiting Professor, University of Plymouth; Author, Consciousness: An Introduction - **Extract length:** 83 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `memory_and_persistence`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Psychologist and Skeptic; Author, Consciousness: An Introduction](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10397) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-102 — Psychologist, University of Virginia — Jonathan Haidt > Will younger social scientists be more morally diverse than the baby boom generation? Maybe not. But if they make it through their sensitive periods without seeing themselves as part of a revolution, they just might be more open to diverse ideas about the origins of mind, the scope of morals, and the workings of society. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Social Psychologist; Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership, New York University Stern School of Business; Author, The Righteous Mind - **Extract length:** 55 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity` - **Source:** [Psychologist, University of Virginia](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10510) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-103 — Psychologist, University of California, Irvine — Elizabeth Loftus > I wish I could say that I was optimistic that the problem of wrongful convictions will virtually disappear, sort of like polio. I can't. But I am optimistic that the problem of wrongful convictions will become smaller than it once was. Here's why. Just as the a plane crash leads to a microscopic analysis of what went wrong, so these cases of proven wrongful conviction have been dissected to determine what went wrong. The answer in the majority of cases is faulty memory. In a recent case, a rape victim misidentified a man as her attacker — a mistake of faulty memory. Readers can find out more about how these kinds of errors happen by reviewing the cases on the website of the Innocence Project. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Psychologist, University of California, Irvine - **Extract length:** 125 words - **Trajectory signals:** `memory_and_persistence` - **Source:** [Psychologist, University of California, Irvine](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10640) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-104 — Psychologist & Computer Scientist; Engines for Education Inc.; Author, Making Minds Less Well Educated than Our Own — Roger Schank > Fifteen years ago I was asked to join the board of editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. In short order, I learned that these editors saw themselves as guardians of knowledge. They knew what was true and what was important and only knowledge that fit those criteria would be in their encyclopedia. I asked if the encyclopedia could be say, ten times bigger, economic issues aside, and they said ‘no' the right information was already in there. I started to explain that the world as they knew it was going to change before their eyes and they would soon be toast, but they didn't understand. - **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:** 103 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `machine_intelligence` - **Source:** [Psychologist & Computer Scientist; Engines for Education Inc.; Author, Making Minds Less Well Educated than Our Own](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10316) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-105 — Ophthalmologist and Neurobiologist, University of California, Davis — Leo M. Chalupa > Taken together, the implications of these and many other findings in the biomedical sciences are clear. We will be able to regenerate parts of the brain that have been worn out or damaged during the course of a lifetime, providing renewed capabilities to those who are currently considered old folks. So better start thinking what you'll be doing with all those extra years of life. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Neurobiologist; Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology, George Washington University - **Extract length:** 65 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation` - **Source:** [Ophthalmologist and Neurobiologist, University of California, Davis](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10407) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-106 — Professor of Journalism, New York University; formerly journalist, Science magazine; Author, Zero: The Biography Of A Dangerous Idea — Charles Seife > Even though the future is dimming for American physics, there is room for optimism—the prospects for major discoveries are the brightest they've been in years. We are in the midst of a cosmological revolution; we are beginning to understand the physical laws that governed the early universe. Before the end of the decade, European experiments, such as the Planck satellite and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN will allow physicists to delve deeper than ever before into the story of the infant cosmos. While physics in the United States is withering, there will be fertile soil where a transplant can take root once again. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Journalism, New York University; Former Journalist, Science Magazine; Author, Hawking Hawking - **Extract length:** 104 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Professor of Journalism, New York University; formerly journalist, Science magazine; Author, Zero: The Biography Of A Dangerous Idea](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10521) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-107 — Physicist, MIT; Researcher, Precision Cosmology — Max Tegmark > I believe that consciousness is, essentially, the way information feels when being processed. Since matter can be arranged to process information in numerous ways of vastly varying complexity, this implies a rich variety of levels and types of consciousness. The particular type of consciousness that we subjectively know is then a phenomenon that arises in certain highly complex physical systems that input, process, store and output information. Clearly, if atoms can be assembled to make humans, the laws of physics also permit the construction of vastly more advanced forms of sentient life. Yet such advanced beings can probably only come about in a two-step process: first intelligent beings evolve through natural selection, then they choose to pass on the torch of life by building more advanced consciousness that can further improve itself. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Physicist, MIT; Researcher, Precision Cosmology; Scientific Director, Foundational Questions Institute; President, Future of Life Institute; Author, Life 3.0 - **Extract length:** 132 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Physicist, MIT; Researcher, Precision Cosmology](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10655) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-108 — Futurist, Business Strategist; Cofounder. Global Business Network, a Monitor Company; Author, The Long Boom — Peter Schwartz > I am very optimistic about growing older. I turned 60 this year and several decades ago I would have looked forward to a steady decline in all my physical and mental capabilities, leading into a long and messy death. The accelerating pace of biological and medical advances that are unfolding in front of us are heavily focused on reducing the infirmities of aging and curing or transforming the diseases of old age from fatal to chronic. It means that ninety really will be the new sixty and there is a good chance that I will be among the vigorous new centenarians of mid century, with most of my faculties working fairly well. Vision, hearing, memory, cognition, bone and muscle strength, skin tone, hair and of course sexual vigor will all be remediable in the near future. Alzheimer's may be curable and most cancers are likely to be treatable if not curable. And regenerative medicine may truly lead to real increase in youthfulness as new custom grown organs replace old less functional ones. And within a few decades we are likely to be able to slow aging itself, which could even lead to life beyond 120. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Futurist; Senior Vice President for Global Government Relations and Strategic Planning, Salesforce.com; Author, Inevitable Surprises - **Extract length:** 195 words - **Trajectory signals:** `memory_and_persistence`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Futurist, Business Strategist; Cofounder. Global Business Network, a Monitor Company; Author, The Long Boom](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10323) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-109 — Neuroscience Researcher; Author, The End of Faith — Sam Harris > Because I believe that moral truths transcend the contingencies of culture, I think that human beings will eventually converge in their moral judgments. I am painfully aware, however, that we are living in a world where Muslims riot by the hundreds of thousands over cartoons, where Catholics oppose condom use in villages decimated by AIDS, and where the only "moral" judgment that seems guaranteed to unite the better part of humanity at this moment is that homosexuality is wrong. Which is to say that I am here celebrating our moral progress while being convinced that billions of my neighbors are profoundly confused about good and evil. I may be a bigger optimist than I thought. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Neuroscientist; Philosopher; Author, Making Sense - **Extract length:** 115 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Neuroscience Researcher; Author, The End of Faith](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10416) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-110 — Professor, The University of Washington School of Medicine; Author, A Brain For All Seasons — William H. Calvin > Our present civilization is like a magnificent cathedral, back before flying buttresses were retrofitted to stabilize the walls. Civilization now needs a retrofit for stabilizing its foundations. It will be a large undertaking, not unlike those that once went into building pyramids and cathedrals. I'm optimistic that the younger generation can create a better civilization during the major makeover—provided that those currently in the leadership can stop this runaway coal train, real fast. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Theoretical Neurobiologist; Affiliate Professor Emeritus, University of Washington; Author, Global Fever - **Extract length:** 73 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Professor, The University of Washington School of Medicine; Author, A Brain For All Seasons](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10532) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-111 — The Rise of Autism and the Digital Age — Simon Baron-Cohen > Computers operate on the basis of extreme precision, and so does the autistic mind. Computers deal in black-and-white binary code, and so does the autistic mind. Computers follow rules, and so does the autistic mind. Computers are systems, and the autistic mind is the ultimate systemizer. The autistic mind is only interested in data that are predictable and lawful. The inherently ambiguous and unpredictable world of people and emotions is a turn-off for someone with autism, but a rapid series of clicks of the mouse that leads to the same result every time that sequence is performed is reassuringly attractive. Many children with autism develop an intuitive understanding of computers in the same way that other children develop an intuitive understanding of people. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Developmental Psychopathology, University of Cambridge; Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge; Director, Autism Research Centre, Cambridge; Author, The Pattern Seekers - **Extract length:** 123 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity` - **Source:** [The Rise of Autism and the Digital Age](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10669) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-112 — Science Historian; Author, Project Orion — George Dyson > Two near-inexhaustible energy sources—sunlight and the angular momentum of the rotating earth—combine, via the atmosphere, to produce the energy flux we know as wind. We have two well-proven methods of capturing this energy: windmills and sailing ships. Windmills are real-estate limited, since most available land surface is already spoken for, and distribution-limited since wind-swept areas tend to be far from where large concentrations of people live. Sailing ships turn wind energy directly into long-distance transport, but the practice was abandoned in an era of cheap fuel. The prospects deserve a second look. It is possible to not only conserve, but even accumulate, fuel reserves by sailing around the world. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Science Historian; Author, Analogia - **Extract length:** 109 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Science Historian; Author, Project Orion](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10330) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-113 — Inventor and Technologist; Author, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology — Ray Kurzweil > Consider prosperity. The inherent 50 percent deflation rate inherent in information technology and its growing purview is causing the decline of poverty. The poverty rate in Asia, according to the World Bank, declined by 50 percent over the past ten years due to information technology, and will decline at current rates by 90 percent in the next ten years. All areas of the world are being affected, including Africa which is now undergoing a rapid invasion of the Internet. Even Sub Saharan Africa had a 5% growth rate last year. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Principal Developer of the first omni-font optical character recognition - **Extract length:** 90 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Inventor and Technologist; Author, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10425) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-114 — Software and Design Pioneer. — Kai Krause > To be able to see all the works of all the great artists, and keep a copy to then examine up-close, at your leisure, in your own home — to listen to the music of any composer, new or old...what an absolute dream in itself that would have been for any and all of them! Consider you hear about 'that new Beethoven symphony': you would have to physically travel to a performance somewhere, and even then you could only hear that one, not any of the others, and: you would likely forget it, since you would hardly get a chance to hear it again to build a long term memory of it. Never mind mentioning movies here, or radio, television, let alone the web. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Software Pioneer; Philosopher; Author, A Realtime Literature Explorer - **Extract length:** 124 words - **Trajectory signals:** `memory_and_persistence`, `consciousness_and_identity` - **Source:** [Software and Design Pioneer.](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10543) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-115 — CEO, Biotechonomy; Founding Director, Harvard Business School's Life Sciences Project; Author, The Untied States of America — Juan Enriquez > As long as you can become and remain a part of the network, the power of place matters ever less. Who your parents were, where you were born, is irrelevant as long as you have access to and interest in education, technology, science, and networks. Every time you open a science magazine, research a new material or gene, map a brain, ocean, or piece of the universe there is a smorgasbord of opportunities to learn and build something new, to create, to accumulate enough prestige, wealth, or power to fundamentally change many lives. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Managing Director, Excel Venture Management; Co-author (with Steve Gullans), Evolving Ourselves - **Extract length:** 93 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [CEO, Biotechonomy; Founding Director, Harvard Business School's Life Sciences Project; Author, The Untied States of America](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10258) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-116 — Former VP, Microsoft & Co-Founder & Director, Microsoft's Virtual Worlds Group/Social Computing Group — Linda Stone > Attention is the most powerful tool of the human spirit. The opportunity this generation can and appears to be seizing, is to move collective attention away from the type of anxiety and despair fueled by campaigns like the War on Terror and Climate Crisis and toward the most positive future we can create together, as highlighted by blogs like Worldchanging.com. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Hi-Tech Industry Consultant; Former Executive at Apple Computer and Microsoft Corporation - **Extract length:** 60 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Former VP, Microsoft & Co-Founder & Director, Microsoft's Virtual Worlds Group/Social Computing Group](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10337) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-117 — Physicist, Perimeter Institute; Author, The Trouble With Physics — Lee Smolin > How can I be optimistic without knowing what direction science will take? This is exactly the point. There are two kinds of optimism, the optimism of people who think they know the future and the optimism of people who believe the future will be more interesting and, if always imperfect, more wonderful than they can imagine. I am of the second kind. The first kind sometimes comes along with a belief that time and change are illusions, and that the world is evolving towards an eternal timeless state of perfection. This is the optimism of religious fundamentalists and orthodox Marxists, and one sees it reflected also in the cosmologies in which our evolving universe is just a transient fluctuation in an otherwise permanent state of thermal equilibrium. The opposite kind of optimism lies behind the evolutionary theorists who believe the world is so intricate that the simplest mechanism that could predict the future of life and the cosmos is the universe itself. If we are the first kind of optimist we seek to transcend the complexities of life to discover something eternal behind it, something like the imagined view of God. If we are the second, we seek to live and think within the swirl of life; we aim for comprehension and wisdom but have no illusions of transcendence or control. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Physicist, Perimeter Institute; Author, Einstein's Unfinished Revolution - **Extract length:** 221 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Physicist, Perimeter Institute; Author, The Trouble With Physics](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10683) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-118 — Science Writer; Founding chairman of the International Centre for Life; Author, Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code — Matt Ridley > The future. That's what I'm optimistic about. The historian Macaulay said, in 1830: 'We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us and with just as much apparent reason.' The eternal, enduring pessimism of human beings about the future does real harm by persuading people, especially the young, to retreat from adventure and enterprise into anomie. Sure, the world has problems: AIDS, Islamofascism, carbon dioxide. But I bet we can solve them as we have solved others, such as smallpox, the population explosion and the high price of whale oil. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Science Writer; Fellow, Royal Society of Literature and the Academy of Medical Sciences; Author,The Evolution of Everything - **Extract length:** 115 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Science Writer; Founding chairman of the International Centre for Life; Author, Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10434) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-119 — Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School; Director, Center for Computational Genetics — George Church > I am optimistic that millions more will share. Millions already do share to benefit society (or whatever) in old and new social phenomena ranging from the Red Cross to Wikipedia, from MySpace/YouTube to SEC compensation disclosures. We wear ribbons and openly share personal experiences on topics that were once taboo, hidden from view, like depression, sexual orientation, and cancer. Rabbis' daily tasks now include genetic counseling. Our ability to track disease spread, not just HIV, bird flu, or bioterrorism, but even the common cold, will benefit from the new technologies and the new openness—leading to a bio-weather map. We will learn so much more about ourselves and how we interact with our environment and our fellow humans. We will be able to connect with other people who share our traits. I am optimistic that we will not be de-humanized (continuing the legacy of feudalism and industrial revolution), but we might be re-humanized, relieved of a few more ailments, to contemplate our place in the universe, and transcend out brutal past. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor, Harvard University; Director, Personal Genome Project; Co-author (with Ed Regis), Regenesis - **Extract length:** 170 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School; Director, Center for Computational Genetics](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10554) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-120 — Psychologist; Founder of Gottman Institute; Author (with Julie Gottman), And Baby Makes Three — John Gottman > In the past 13 years we have been able to study 222 first born babies interacting with their new parents using video cameras and the Swiss Lausanne Triadic Play method. I am very impressed with babies and working with them has renewed my faith in our species. However, in the first study we did with 130 newlywed couples we discovered the grim fact that 67% of couples experienced a large drop in relationship satisfaction in the first 3 years of their baby's life. We also found that hostility between parents increased dramatically. The baby was deeply negatively affected by this increased hostility. In fact, from the way a couple argued in the last trimester of pregnancy we could predict with high accuracy how much their baby would laugh and cry. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Psychologist; Co-founder, The Gottman Relationship Institute; Author, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work - **Extract length:** 130 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Psychologist; Founder of Gottman Institute; Author (with Julie Gottman), And Baby Makes Three](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10265) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-121 — Senior Editor, Newsweek; Author High Rise — Jerry Adler > That's what keeps me awake at night, reading. It is much too late for me to go back and learn enough math to meet Einstein on his own terms, much less Heisenberg or Hawking. But I am sustained by optimism that someday I will transcend my own limitations, that I will achieve the conceptual breakthrough necessary to grasp relativity, quantum mechanics and the rest of it on a deep level. Someday I will understand not just the epiphenomena of physics, the trains and the slits and the cats in boxes, but their mathematical essence. Their metaphysics. I'm optimistic. Really. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Senior Editor, Newsweek - **Extract length:** 99 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Senior Editor, Newsweek; Author High Rise](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10344) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-122 — Independent Investigator and Theoretician; Author, No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality — Judith Rich Harris > Collecting people information is something we do without training and with no reward other than the enjoyment we get from doing it. We don't need a nudge from the conscious mind, telling us that the information may come in handy someday. But in fact it may come in handy. People we have never met before may be important to us in the future. They may become our trading partners or employers. They may become our lovers or our rivals. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Independent Investigator and Theoretician; Author, The Nurture Assumption; No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality - **Extract length:** 79 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Independent Investigator and Theoretician; Author, No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10697) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-123 — Media Analyst; Documentary Writer; Author, Get Back in the Box : Innovation from the Inside Out — Douglas Rushkoff > Our most natural inclination should be to kill each other, one way or another. From plankton to pachyderms, the myth of nature as a sustainable and loving collaborative is about as absurd as that of a Creator Being. Unless we prove different from every other species, we will continue to compete with the rest of the planet for a disproportionate share of its resources — and with one another for the spoils of this ongoing war. That's just life. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Media Analyst; Documentary Writer; Author, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus - **Extract length:** 79 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Media Analyst; Documentary Writer; Author, Get Back in the Box : Innovation from the Inside Out](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10443) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-124 — Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc.; Editor, Open Sources: Voices From the Open Source Software Revolution and Open Sources 2.0 — Chris DiBona > With sufficient resolution, many things will be as clear to all: Troop movements, power plant placement, ill-conceived dumping, or just your neighbor building a pool. I am optimistic enough to think that the long term reaction to this kind of knowledge will be the recognition of the necessity, or the proper management and monitored phase out of the unwanted. I am not as optimistic about the short term, with those in power opting to suppress this kind of information access, or worse, acting on the new knowledge by launching into a boil the conflicts that have been simmering for uncountable years. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Open Source and Public Sector, Google - **Extract length:** 101 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc.; Editor, Open Sources: Voices From the Open Source Software Revolution and Open Sources 2.0](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10565) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-125 — Researcher of Pirahã Culture; Chair of Languages, Literatures, & Cultures, Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology, Illinois State Universi — Daniel L. Everett > Communalism: The Pirahãs seem to accept only knowledge that helps, not knowledge that coerces. Think of our English expression 'knowledge is power'. The concept as practiced in most industrial societies is really that 'knowledge is power for me so long as I have it and you don't'. But to many peoples like the Pirahãs, knowledge is something for us all to share. It is power to the people, not power to a person. The Pirahãs don't allow top secret conversations. Every member of their society knows what every other member is doing and how they are doing it. There is a communal mind. There is freedom and security in group knowledge. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Linguistic Researcher; Dean of Arts and Sciences, Bentley University; Author, How Language Began - **Extract length:** 111 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Researcher of Pirahã Culture; Chair of Languages, Literatures, & Cultures, Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology, Illinois State Universi](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10272) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-126 — Biologist, Schumacher College, Devon, UK; Author, How The Leopard Changed Its Spots — Brian Goodwin > I am optimistic about our ability as a species to respond to the challenge presented by peak oil, the end of the cheap energy era that has lasted about 200 years, and to enter a new cultural phase in our evolution. There are several key developments that, despite the unprecedented challenge of this transition, encourage me to believe that we can make it. These come from both our scientific and technological insights into ways of resolving some deep problems in present cultural habits, and from shifts of perception that are occurring in cultural values. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Biology at Schumacher College - **Extract length:** 94 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Biologist, Schumacher College, Devon, UK; Author, How The Leopard Changed Its Spots](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10345) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-127 — Co-editor, Boing Boing; Research Affiliate, Institute for the Future; Editor-at-Large, MAKE: — David Pescovitz > Many blogs, including the one I co-edit, have been described as virtual cabinets of curiosity—storehouses of unusual links, odd memes, fringe culture, and weird news. Nearly every major city has at least one carefully-curated "Olde Curiosity Shoppe" selling strange objets d'art and natural oddities packaged as Victorian chic. In fact, I was recently struck by the obviously wunderkammer-inspired display of mounted insects and red coral on sale at a mainstream home decor store in the mall. And in the ultimate evidence of a trend, at least two coffee table books on the subject have been published in the last few years. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Co-editor, BoingBoing.net - **Extract length:** 101 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Co-editor, Boing Boing; Research Affiliate, Institute for the Future; Editor-at-Large, MAKE:](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10710) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-128 — Physicist, Harvard University; Author, Warped Passages — Lisa Randall > Optimism is an "ism" like any other. People reading these pages should recognize the responses as the hopeful beliefs that they are. With this caveat, I'm optimistic that people will increasingly value truth (over truthiness). After recent digressions into beliefs and images dominating current thought, I'm anticipating that society will increasingly recognize and understand the value of knowledge. People will want to make their own critical judgments, know more facts, and stop deferring to questionable authorities or visual media for their education. I don't necessarily think everyone will do so. But I'm optimistic that the ones who do won't remain a silent minority. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Physicist, Harvard University; Author, Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs - **Extract length:** 103 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Physicist, Harvard University; Author, Warped Passages](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10452) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-129 — Psychologist, Harvard University; Author, Five Minds for the Future — Howard Gardner > When, at John Brockman's urging, I don the hat of "scientific optimism," I think of the early detection of learning disabilities or difficulties, coupled with interventions that can ameliorate or even dissipate these difficulties. In the near future we will be able to use neural imaging techniques to determine which infants or toddlers are at risk of having problems in reading, writing, calculating, spelling, mastery spatial relations, mastering social relations, and the like. (We may even have genetic markers for these risk factors). And I believe that the more specific the detection of the disorder (i.e. which kind of reading problem, what sort of social deficit), the more likely that we can ultimately devise interventions that directly address a particular problem. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Author, A Synthesizing Mind - **Extract length:** 121 words - **Trajectory signals:** `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Psychologist, Harvard University; Author, Five Minds for the Future](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10132) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-130 — Mathematician; Executive Director, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford; Author, The Millennium Problems — Keith Devlin > Incidentally, I don't think I am being swayed or seduced by the newest technology. Certainly, I never thought that television, or the computer, or even artificial intelligence, offered a path to effective math learning. What makes immersive 3D virtual environments the perfect medium for learning basic math skills is not that they are created digitally on computers. Nor is it that they are the medium of highly seductive videogames. Rather, it is because they provide a means for simulating the real world we live in, and out of which mathematics arises, and of doing so in a way that brings out and confronts the player (i.e., learner) with the underlying mathematical structure of our world. If Euclid were alive today, this is how he would teach math. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Mathematician; Executive Director, H-STAR Institute, Stanford; Author, Finding Fibonacci - **Extract length:** 127 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Mathematician; Executive Director, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford; Author, The Millennium Problems](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10208) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-131 — Psychologist and Biologist, Harvard University: Author, Moral Minds — Unattributed Edge contributor > Peel away the explicit rules of action handed down by such institutions as religion and government, and one finds a common moral code. Those with a religious background tend to believe that abortion is wrong and so too is euthanasia. Atheists see life through a different lens. Remove the doctrinal rules and our intuitive moral psychology propels us ¾ our species that is ¾ to decide what is morally right or wrong based on general principles concerning the welfare of others and our own virtues. If the Protestant and Catholic Irish can see past their religious beliefs, empathize with the other, recognize their shared underlying humanity and settle into peaceful co-existence, why not other warring factions? - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Extract length:** 116 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Psychologist and Biologist, Harvard University: Author, Moral Minds](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10139) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-132 — Classicist; Cultural Historian; Provost, Georgetown University; Author, Augustine: A New Biography — James J. O'Donnell > After all, we started out in the African savannah, trying to run fast enough to catch up with things we could eat and fast enough to stay away from things that could eat us. Our natural destiny is to squat in caves and shiver, then die young. We decided we didn't like that, and we figured out how to do better. Even if the numbskulls get their way and we were to wind up back in a cave, we would remember—and we wouldn't be in the cave long. We do not remember everything, and there are losses. But we turn out to be a stubbornly smart, resilient and persistent species, and we do not forget the most important things. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Classics Scholar, University Librarian, ASU; Author, Pagans - **Extract length:** 119 words - **Trajectory signals:** `memory_and_persistence`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Classicist; Cultural Historian; Provost, Georgetown University; Author, Augustine: A New Biography](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10216) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-133 — Psychologist, Harvard University; Author, The Blank Slate — Steven Pinker > As horrific as present-day events are, such sadism would be unthinkable today in most of the world. This is just one example of the most important and under appreciated trend in the history of our species: the decline of violence. Cruelty as popular entertainment, human sacrifice to indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving device, genocide for convenience, torture and mutilation as routine forms of punishment, execution for trivial crimes and misdemeanors, assassination as a means of political succession, pogroms as an outlet for frustration, and homicide as the major means of conflict resolution—all were unexceptionable features of life for most of human history. Yet today they are statistically rare in the West, less common elsewhere than they used to be, and widely condemned when they do occur. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Johnstone Family Professor, Department of Psychology; Harvard University; Author, Rationality - **Extract length:** 127 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Psychologist, Harvard University; Author, The Blank Slate](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10146) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-134 — Psychologist, University of Pennsylvania, Author, Authentic Happiness — Martin Seligman > Consider now the principle of NonZero that Robert Wright (2000) articulates in his book of the same name. Wright argues that the invisible hand of biological and cultural evolution ineluctably select for the complex over the simple because positive sum games have the survival and reproductive edge over zero sum games, and that over epochal time more and more complex systems, bulkily, but necessarily, arise. Space does not allow me to expand on Wright's thesis and I must refer the justifiably unconvinced reader to his very substantial arguments. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor and Director, Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania; Author, Flourish - **Extract length:** 88 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting` - **Source:** [Psychologist, University of Pennsylvania, Author, Authentic Happiness](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10223) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-135 — Social Psychologist, Hope College (Michigan); Author, A Quiet World: Living with Hearing Loss — David G. Myers > Good news! That future has arrived in the UK and much of Scandinavia, and now here in more than one hundred west Michigan facilities, and it is coming to several other American cities. When people experience public address or TV sound via "hearing aid compatible assistive listening" (with their flick of a hearing aid switch) they typically respond with amazed joy. What's more, they report increased satisfaction with their hearing aids. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Professor of Psychology, Hope College; Co-author, Psychology, 11th Edition - **Extract length:** 71 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Social Psychologist, Hope College (Michigan); Author, A Quiet World: Living with Hearing Loss](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10151) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-136 — Collector, Contemporary African Art; High-Tech Ecological Researcher & Director, Liquid Jungle Lab, Panama — Jean "Johnny" Pigozzi > The recent creation of YouTube is another very interesting and important development which provides Internet users with a cheap and easy way to make and post short videos. I think we have just begun to touch the surface of this huge iceberg. It means that anyone who sees a policeman beating someone up, or someone kicking their dog, or Paris Hilton kissing a young man in a car, or someone being mistreated in a hospital, etc. can post it on YouTube and have the entire world see it in less than ten minutes. People can write great editorials and post great blogs, but the power of a short film is a thousand times stronger than any well written anything anywhere. I am excited and also terrified by this new opportunity. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Investor, art collector, philanthropist, photographer - **Extract length:** 130 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Collector, Contemporary African Art; High-Tech Ecological Researcher & Director, Liquid Jungle Lab, Panama](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10230) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-137 — Publisher of Skeptic magazine, monthly columnist for Scientific American; Author, Why Darwin Matters — Michael Shermer > Nevertheless, the rise of science ineluctably attenuated this near universality of magical thinking by proffering natural explanations where before there were only supernatural ones. Before Darwin, design theory (in the form of William Paley's natural theology, which gave us the "watchmaker" argument) was the only game in town so everyone believed that life was designed by God. Today less than half believe that in America, the most religious nation of the developed democracies, and in most other parts of the world virtually everyone accepts evolution without qualification. That's progress. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Publisher, Skeptic magazine; Monthly Columnist, Scientific American; Presidential Fellow, Chapman University; Author, Heavens on Earth - **Extract length:** 89 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Publisher of Skeptic magazine, monthly columnist for Scientific American; Author, Why Darwin Matters](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10159) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-138 — Editor-At-Large, Wired; Author, New Rules for the New Economy — Kevin Kelly > I am optimistic about the only thing—by definition—that we can be optimistic about: the future. When I tally up the plus and minuses at work in the world, I see progress. Tomorrow looks like it will be better than today. Not just progress for me, but for everyone on the planet in aggregate and on average. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Senior Maverick, Wired; Author, What Technology Wants and The Inevitable - **Extract length:** 56 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Editor-At-Large, Wired; Author, New Rules for the New Economy](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10237) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-139 — Philosopher; University Professor, Co-Director, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University; Author, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon — Daniel C. Dennett > I think the main problem we face today is overreaction, making martyrs out of people who desperately want to become martyrs. What it will take is patience, good information, and a steady demand for universal education about the world’s religions. This will favor the evolution of avirulent forms of religion, which we can all welcome as continuing parts of our planet’s cultural heritage. Eventually the truth will set us free. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Philosopher; Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Co-Director, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University; Author, From Bacteria to Bach and Back - **Extract length:** 70 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Philosopher; University Professor, Co-Director, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University; Author, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10090) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-140 — Writer; Author, Machines That Think — Pamela McCorduck > For a long time my optimism centered on computing in general, and what kinds of benefits it might bring us. Events have shown I entertained far too modest an optimism—I'm embarrassed to say that the impact of the Internet, in particular the World Wide Web, eluded me completely at first. A few years ago, I returned to artificial intelligence, which I'd written about early on, and then gone away from. Press narratives were uncritical about the field's death throes, and I expected to write an elegy. Instead, I found a revelation. Artificial intelligence is not only robustly healthy, building on its very significant gains since I first wrote about it, but the field's present ambitions burst with, well, vitality. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Author, Machines Who Think, The Universal Machine, Bounded Rationality, This Could Be Important; Co-author (with Edward Feigenbaum), The Fifth Generation - **Extract length:** 119 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence` - **Source:** [Writer; Author, Machines That Think](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10166) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-141 — Physicist, former President, Weizmann Institute of Science — Haim Harari > I am not at all optimistic that any of the above will happen soon. All possible mistakes and wrong turns will probably be attempted. The weakest link is our chronic short sightedness, which is bad in the case of the general public and is much worse for its elected political leaders, who think in terms of months and years, not decades and certainly not centuries. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Physicist, former President, Weizmann Institute of Science; Author, A View from the Eye of the Storm - **Extract length:** 65 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Physicist, former President, Weizmann Institute of Science](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10244) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-142 — President & CEO, Aspen Institute. Former CEO, CNN, Managing Editor, TIME; Author, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. — Walter Isaacson > I am very optimistic about print as a technology. Words on paper are a wonderful information storage, retrieval, distribution, and consumer product. That is why I appreciate the fact that many Edge forums are transformed into books, and it's why I hope someday that there is a gorgeous Edge Magazine that I can flip through and touch. Imagine if we had been getting our information delivered digitally to our screens for the past 400 years. Then some modern Gutenberg had come up with a technology that was able to transfer these words and pictures onto pages that could be delivered to our doorstep, and we could take them to the backyard, the bath, or the bus. We would be thrilled with this technological leap forward, and we would predict that someday it might replace the internet. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** President and CEO of the Aspen Institute; author, Steve Jobs and Einstein: His Life and Universe - **Extract length:** 136 words - **Trajectory signals:** `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [President & CEO, Aspen Institute. Former CEO, CNN, Managing Editor, TIME; Author, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10096) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-143 — Communications Expert; Author, Smart Mobs — Howard Rheingold > My optimism about the potential of the generation of digital natives is neither technological determinism nor naive utopianism. Many-to-many communication enables but does not compel or guarantee widespread civic engagement by populations who never before had a chance to express their public voices. And while the grimmest lesson of the twentieth century is to mistrust absolutist utopians, I perceive the problem to be in the absolutism more than the utopia. Those who argued for the abolition of the age-old practice of human slavery were utopians. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Communications Expert; Author, Smart Mobs - **Extract length:** 85 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Communications Expert; Author, Smart Mobs](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10173) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-144 — Physicist, Universite' de la Mediterrane' (Marseille, France); Author: What is time? What is Space? — Carlo Rovelli > When I am pessimistic, I think that history shows that human madness with us to stay: war, greed for more power and more richness, religion, certainty to be the depositary of the ultimate Truth, fear of those different from us ... I see all this madness solidly in control of the planet's affairs. And even some of my scientists friends trust homeopathy. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Theoretical Physicist; Aix-Marseille University, in the Centre de Physique Théorique, Marseille, France; Author, Helgoland; There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness - **Extract length:** 62 words - **Trajectory signals:** `governance_control_and_values`, `successor_intelligence_and_civilization`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Physicist, Universite' de la Mediterrane' (Marseille, France); Author: What is time? What is Space?](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10251) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-145 — Psychologist; Author, Social Intelligence — Daniel Goleman > Nobody seems to mind. True, the head of pulmonary medicine at the local medical center bemoans the toll of the plants' particulates on the respiratory tracts of those who live in the valley, particularly its children. But those who operate the Mt. Tom power plant blithely buy carbon-pollution credits that let it avoid the expense of upgrading its scrubbers. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Psychologist; Author (with Richard Davidson), Altered Traits - **Extract length:** 59 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `machine_intelligence`, `governance_control_and_values` - **Source:** [Psychologist; Author, Social Intelligence](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10102) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-146 — Mallinckrodt Research Professor of Physics and Research Professor of History of Science, Harvard University; Author, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought — Gerald Holton > From other parts of this university, plans are under way to set up a program for higher degrees in the new field of Systems Biology, which has the goal of reaching "an integrated understanding" of biological/medical processes; that program is to bring together faculty and students from biology, medicine, chemistry, physics, mathematics, computation and engineering. And these parochial examples are indications of a general trend in many universities. The new password to success is now "integration" and "interdisciplinarity." If an "official" sacralization of this movement were needed, it would be the 2005 release of a big volume by the National Academy of Sciences, with the title "Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research." - **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:** 109 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `machine_intelligence` - **Source:** [Mallinckrodt Research Professor of Physics and Research Professor of History of Science, Harvard University; Author, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10180) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-147 — Science Editor, The Economist — Geoffrey Carr > The population curves in the newspapers and television programmes of my youth went relentlessly upwards. That was because they had only one, exponential, term. A real population curve, however, is logistic, not exponential. It does not rise indefinitely. Eventually, it reaches an inflection point and starts to level off. That is because a second term in the form of lack of space, lack of resources, disease or direct conflict between individuals stabilises it by matching the birth and death rates. And that was the fate the environmentalists of the 1970s predicted for humanity. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Science Editor - **Extract length:** 93 words - **Trajectory signals:** `successor_intelligence_and_civilization` - **Source:** [Science Editor, The Economist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10108) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-148 — Cognitive Scientist, UC, Irvine; Author, Visual Intelligence — Donald D. Hoffman > Second, scientists soon rediscovered that the problem is surprisingly hard. Neurophysics, real and artificial neural networks, classical and quantum algorithms, information and complexity—standard tools that prove powerful in the study of perception, cognition and intelligence—have yet to yield a single scientific theory of conscious experiences. We cannot, for instance, answer the basic question: Why must this particular pattern of neural activity or this functional property cause, or be, this particular conscious experience (say, the smell of garlic) instead of that other conscious experience (say, the smell of a truffle), or instead of no conscious experience at all? Precise predictions of this type, de rigueur for genuine scientific explanations, have yet to be fashioned, or even plausibly sketched, with the standard tools. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Cognitive Scientist, UC, Irvine; Author, The Case Against Reality - **Extract length:** 121 words - **Trajectory signals:** `machine_intelligence`, `consciousness_and_identity`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Cognitive Scientist, UC, Irvine; Author, Visual Intelligence](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10187) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-149 — Curator, TED Conference — Christopher J. Anderson > Paradoxically, one of the biggest reasons for being optimistic is that there are systemic flaws in the reported world view. Certain types of news — for example dramatic disasters and terrorist actions — are massively over-reported, others — such as scientific progress and meaningful statistical surveys of the state of the world — massively under-reported. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Curator, TED conferences, TED Talks; author, TED Talks - **Extract length:** 55 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Curator, TED Conference](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10114) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-150 — Journalist, The Guardian; Author, The Darwin Wars — Andrew Brown > In particular, such an enquiry would be very careful about what counts as evidence. A friend of mine who does consciousness research once said sourly that "The problem with the brain is that if you go looking for something in there, you're very liable to find it." Similarly, if you go looking for some particular quality in religious belief you are likely to find it there, as well as its opposite. What's needed is the distinctly scientific attitude that takes disconfirming evidence seriously, and doesn't respond to it by simply repeating the confirming evidence. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Journalist, The Guardian - **Extract length:** 94 words - **Trajectory signals:** `consciousness_and_identity`, `biological_and_synthetic_hosting`, `neural_interfaces_and_augmentation`, `epistemic_limits_and_models` - **Source:** [Journalist, The Guardian; Author, The Darwin Wars](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10194) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-151 — Senior Consultant (and Former Editor-In-Chief and Publishing Director), New Scientist — Alun Anderson > Thankfully, the second number is even bigger: 3,000,000 x 10ˆ20 joules. That is the amount of clean, green energy that pours down on the Earth totally free of charge every year. The Sun is providing 7,000 times as much energy as we are using, which leaves plenty for developing China, India and everyone else. How can we not be optimistic? We don't have a long-term energy problem. Our only worries are whether we can find smart ways to use that sunlight efficiently and whether we can move quickly enough from the energy systems we are entrenched in now to the ones we should be using. Given the perils of climate change and dependence on foreign energy, the motivation is there. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** Senior Consultant (and former Editor-in-Chief and Publishing Director), New Scientist; Author, After the Ice - **Extract length:** 120 words - **Trajectory signals:** `general_scientific_culture` - **Source:** [Senior Consultant (and Former Editor-In-Chief and Publishing Director), New Scientist](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10126) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted ### EDGE2007-152 — Professor of Astrophysics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton — Piet Hut > The real basis for the success of science is its unique combination of progressive and conservative elements. A scientist gets brownie points for crazy new ideas, as long as they are really interesting and stimulating, and also for being extremely conservative in criticizing any and all new ideas, as long as the criticism can be shown to be valid. What is interesting in new ideas and what is valid in criticism thereof is determined solely by peer review, by the collective opinions of the body of living scientists, not by falling back on some kind of fixed notion of a method. - **Status:** `archived_exact_extract` - **Credentials:** professor of astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton - **Extract length:** 101 words - **Trajectory signals:** `biological_and_synthetic_hosting` - **Source:** [Professor of Astrophysics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10201) - **Reminder status:** Not yet promoted