01.07.07
The Edge Annual Question 2007
(“WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? WHY?
As an activity, as a state of mind, science is fundamentally optimistic. Science figures out how things work and thus can make them work better. Much of the news is either good news or news that can be made good, thanks to ever deepening knowledge and ever more efficient and powerful tools and techniques. Science, on its frontiers, poses more and ever better questions, ever better put.
What are you optimistic about? Why? Surprise us!”)
(“[160 Contributors; 110,000 words] Robert Trivers, Nathan Myrhvold, George Smoot, Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Nancy Etcoff, Oliver Morton, Bart Kosko, David Buss, Brian Greene, Francesco De Pretis, Corey Powell, Roger Bingham, Alison Gopnik, Robert Sapolsky, Paul Steinhard, Beatrice Golomb, Vittorio Bo, Marcel Kinsbourne, Martin Rees, Ian Wilmut, Barry Smith, Larry Sanger, Steven Strogatz, Mark Pagel, Joichi Ito, Jill Neimark, Leon Lederman, David Deutsch, Frank Wilczek, Cory Doctorow, David Bodanis, Alex (Sandy) Pentland, Marcelo Gleiser, Brian Eno, Philip Zimbardo, Colin Blakemore, W. Daniel Hillis, Garniss Curtis, Mahzarin Banaji, Joel Garreau, Leonard Susskind, Esther Dyson, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Stewart Brand, Andy Clark, Steve Grand, Jason Calacanis, Jaron Lanier, Richard Dawkins, Nicholas Humphrey, Chris Anderson, Karl Sabbagh, David Berreby, Stephen Schneider, Tmothy Taylor, Gergory Benford, Roger Highfield, Rudy Rucker, David Dalrymple, Paul Davies, Scott Sampson, Sherry Turkle, Gary Marcus, Xeni Jardin, Thomas Metzinger, Helen Fisher, Dan Sperber, Paul Saffo, Gregory Cochran, Michael Wolff, Gloria Origgi, Jamshed Bharucha, Diane Halpern, Anton Zeilinger, Clay Shirky, Neil Gershenfeld, Rodney Brooks, Maria Spiropulu, J. Craig Venter, Marco Iacoboni, Eduardo Punset, Jordan Pollack, Adam Bly, Marti Hearst, Tor Nørretranders, Robert Shapiro, David Pescovitz, Judith Rich Harris, Lee Smolin, Simon Baron-Cohen, Max Tegmark, Elizabeth Loftus, Seth Lloyd, Ernst Poppel, Gino Segre, Philip Campbell, Terrence Sejnowski, Chris DiBona, George Church, Kai Krause, Jonathan Haidt, William Calvin, James Geary, Charles Seife, David Gelernter, Andrian Kreye, Randolph M. Nesse, Freeman Dyson, Lisa Randall, Douglas Rushkoff, Matt Ridley, Ray Kurzweil, Sam Harris, Leo Chalupa, Sue Blackmore, John Horgan, Jared Diamond, Nassim Taleb, Rebecca Goldstein, Geoffrey Miller, Brian Goodwin, Jerry Adler, Linda Stone, George Dyson, Peter Schwartz, Roger Schank, Irene Pepperberg, Alexander Vilenkin, Stephen Kosslyn, Robert Provine, Samuel Barondes, Daniel Everett, John Gottman, Juan Enriquez, Carlo Rovelli, Haim Harari, Kevin Kelly, Jean Pigozzi, Martin Seligman, James O’Donnell, Keith Devlin, Piet Hut, Andrew Brown, Donald Hoffman, Gerald Holton, Howard Rheingold, Pamela McCorduck, Michael Shermer, David G. Myers, Steven Pinker, Marc D. Hauser, Howard Gardner, Alun Anderson, Lawrence Krauss, Chris Anderson, Geoffrey Carr, Daniel Goleman, Walter Isaacson, Daniel C. Dennett“)