Edge 287 - May 27, 2009
(10,350 words)
http://www.edge.org/
This online EDGE edition with streaming video is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge287.html
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THE THIRD CULTURE
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"A fascinating chronicle of the big, new ideas that are keeping young scientists up at night."
— Daniel Gilbert
"A preview of the ideas you're going to be reading about in ten years."
— Steven Pinker
WHAT'S NEXT?
DISPATCHES ON THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE
Edited by Max Brockman
[ED. NOTE: What are "the big, new ideas that are keeping young scientists up at night?" Beginning today with Laurence Smith's "Will We Decamp for the Northern Rim", and in the coming weeks, EDGE will publish a selection of the essays in Max Brockman's book WHAT'S NEXT? DISPATCHES ON THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE, published today by Vintage Books.-JB]
Vintage Books
http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Next-Dispatches-Future-Science/dp/0307389316
"To generate this list of contributors, I approached some of today's leading scientists and asked them to name some of the rising stars in their respective disciplines: those who, in their research, are tackling some of science's toughest questions and raising new ones. The list that resulted amounts to a representative who's who of the coming generation of scientists." - Max Brockman
Laurence C. Smith: "WILL WE DECAMP FOR THE NORTHERN RIM?"
"At stake is no less than the global pattern of human settlement in the twenty-first century."
Christian Keysers: "MIRROR NEURONS: ARE WE ETHICAL BY NATURE"
"Evolution has equipped our brains with circuits that enable us to experience what other individuals do and feel."
Nick Bostrom: "HOW SHALL WE ENHANCE HUMAN BEINGS?"
"Given our rudimentary understanding of the human organism, particularly the brain, how can we hope to enhance such a system? It would amount to outdoing evolution...."
Sean Carroll : "OUR PLACE IN AN UNNATURAL UNIVERSE"
"The early universe is hot and dense; the late universe is cold and dilute. Well...why is it like that? The truth is, we have no idea."
Stephon H. S. Alexander: "JUST WHAT IS DARK ENERGY?"
"Dark energy, itself directly unobservable, is the most bewildering substance known, the only "stuff" that acts both on subatomic scales and across the largest distances in the cosmos."
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore: "DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL BRAIN IN ADOLESCENCE"
"Using modern brain-imaging techniques, scientists are discovering that the human brain does indeed change well beyond early childhood."
Jason P. Mitchell: "WATCHING MINDS INTERACT"
"Perhaps the least anticipated contribution of brain imaging to psychological science has been a sudden appreciation of the centrality of social thought to the human mental repertoire."
Matthew D. Lieberman: "WHAT MAKES BIG IDEAS STICKY?"
"Big Ideas sometimes match the structure and function of the human brain such that the brain causes us to see the world in ways that make it virtually impossible not to believe them."
Joshua D. Greene: "FRUIT FLIES OF THE MORAL MIND"
"People often speak of a "moral faculty" or a "moral sense," suggesting that moral judgment is a unified phenomenon, but recent advances in the scientific study of moral judgment paint a very different picture."
Lera Boroditsky: "DO OUR LANGUAGES SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK?"
"Language is a uniquely human gift, central to our experience of being human. Appreciating its role in constructing our mental lives brings us one step closer to understanding the very nature of humanity."
Sam Cooke: "MEMORY ENHANCEMENT, MEMORY ERASURE: IS THIS THE FUTURE OF OUR PAST?"
"Once we come to understand how our memories are formed, stored, and recalled within the brain, we may be able to manipulate them—to shape our own stories. Our past—or at least our recollection of our past—may become a matter of choice."
Deena Skolnick Weisberg: "THE VITAL IMPORTANCE OF IMAGINATION"
"The main goal of my research is to discover the nature of the what-if mechanism and how it allows us to create and comprehend fictional worlds."
David M. Eagleman: "BRAIN TIME"
"The days of thinking of time as a river—evenly flowing, always advancing—are over. Time perception, just like vision, is a construction of the brain and is shockingly easy to manipulate experimentally."
Vanessa Woods & Brian Hare: "OUT OF OUR MINDS: HOW DID HUMANS COME DOWN FROM THE TREES AND WHY DID NO ONE FOLLOW?"
"In the 6 million years since hominids split from the evolutionary ancestor we share with chimpanzees and bonobos, something happened to our brains that allowed us to become master cooperators, accumulate knowledge at a rapid rate, and manipulate tools to colonize almost every corner of the planet."
Nathan Wolfe: "THE ALIENS AMONG US"
"While viruses have to infect cellular forms of life in order to complete their life cycles, this does not mean that causing devastation is their destiny. The existing equilibrium of our planet is dependent on the actions of the viral world, and their elimination would have profound consequences."
Seirian Sumner: "HOW DID THE SOCIAL INSECTS BECOME SOCIAL?"
"We would like to know what the conditions and selection pressures were that tipped the ancestors of the eusocial insects over the ledge and down toward eusociality."
Katerina Harvati : "EXTINCTION AND THE EVOLUTION OF HUMANKIND"
"t is now clear that humans (whether fossil or living) are not immune from biological forces and that extinction was (and, indeed, is) a distinct possibility."
Gavin Schmidt: "WHY HASN'T SPECIALIZATION LED TO THE BALKANIZATION OF SCIENCE?"
"Even as scientific output has increased exponentially, concerns have been raised that growing specialization will end by making it impossible for scientists in different fields to communicate, let alone collaborate."
[MORE...]
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WILL WE DECAMP FOR THE NORTHERN RIM?
By Laurence C. Smith
"Already the impacts are obvious in the extreme north, where melting Arctic sea ice, drowning polar bears, and forlorn Inuit hunters are by now iconic images of global warming. The rapidity and severity of Arctic warming is truly dramatic. However, the Arctic, a relatively small, thinly populated region, will always be marginal in terms of its raw social and economic impact on the rest of us. The greater story lies to the south, penetrating deeply into the "Northern Rim," a vast zone of economically significant territory and adjacent ocean owned by the United States, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Russia. As in the Arctic, climate change there has already begun. This zone — which constitutes almost 30 percent of the Earth's land area and is home to its largest remaining forests, its greatest untouched mineral, water, and energy reserves, and a (growing) population of almost 100 million people — will undergo one of the most profound biophysical and social expansions of this century."
LAURENCE C. SMITH is Professor and vice chairman of geography and professor of earth and space sciences at UCLA. He studies likely impacts of northern climate change including the economic effects in the Northern Rim.
[MORE...]
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ARTICLES OF NOTE
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
May 27, 2009
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
Why Are Humans Different From All Other Apes? It's the Cooking, Stupid
By DWIGHT GARNER
Catching Fire" is a plain-spoken and thoroughly gripping scientific essay that presents nothing less than a new theory of human evolution.
[MORE...]
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NEW YORK TIMES
May 20, 2009
THE WILD SIDE
Guest Column: Math and the City
BY STEVEN STROGATZ
One of the pleasures of looking at the world through mathematical eyes is that you can see certain patterns that would otherwise be hidden. This week's column is about one such pattern. It's a beautiful law of collective organization that links urban studies to zoology. It reveals Manhattan and a mouse to be variations on a single structural theme.
[MORE...]
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BBC NEWS
May 26, 2009
Eno artwork lights up opera house
The artwork of music producer Brian Eno is illuminating the iconic sails of the Sydney Opera House as part of a sound and light festival in the city.
[MORE...]
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
May 26, 2009
LETTERS
Learning to Accept the Unknowable
To the Editor:
Re "What You Don't Know Makes You Nervous," by Daniel Gilbert (Op-Ed, May 21): Professor Gilbert is surely right in arguing that uncertainty plays an important role in human unhappiness. But cognitive psychologists, like the late Albert Ellis, would argue that the way we think about uncertainty is also critical. If we catastrophize about the inherent uncertainty in life — "I can't stand not knowing what the market will do! This is horrible!" — then we will drive our mood much deeper into the ground. ...
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NEW YORK TIMES
May 26, 2009
Texting May Be Taking a Toll
By KATIE HAFNER
...The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data on health effects. But Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who has studied texting among teenagers in the Boston area for three years, said it might be causing a shift in the way adolescents develop.
[MORE...]
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FAST COMPANY
June 2009
100 Most Creative People in Business
43. Neri Oxman
By Anya Kamenetz
...This laughing, chic young woman in a flowing Helmut Lang jacket is an artist, architect, ecologist, computer scientist, and designer who is not just making new things but also coming up with new ways to make things.
[MORE...]
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INTERVIEW MAGAZINE
April 28, 2009
Neri OXMAN
By JOHN ORTVED
Photography TOM ALLEN
Imagine a chair that moves when you move, that adjusts to every muscle in your body, that responds like a living organism . . . a chair kind of like a really excellent lover. Neri Oxman imagined such a chair. Then she built it.
[MORE...]
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
May 24, 2009
The Coming Superbrain
By JOHN MARKOFF
... Profiled in the documentary "Transcendent Man," which had its premier last month at the TriBeCa Film Festival, and with his own Singularity movie due later this year, Dr. Kurzweil has become a one-man marketing machine for the concept of post-humanism.
[MORE...]
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WIRED MAGAZINE
May 22, 2007
Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability
By Steven Levy
...Ironically, economics was a distant focus in the first days of Google. After Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the company in 1998, they channeled their energy into its free search product and left much of the business planning to a 22-year-old Stanford graduate named Salar Kamangar, Google's ninth employee. The early assumption was that although ads would be an important source of revenue, licensing search technology and selling servers would be just as lucrative.
[MORE...]
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WIRED MAGAZINE
May 22, 2007
The New New Economy: More Startups, Fewer Giants, Infinite Opportunity
By Chris Anderson
...This crisis is not just the trough of a cycle but the end of an era. We will come out not just wiser but different.
[MORE...]
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WIRED MAGAZINE
May 22, 2007
The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online
By Kevin Kelly
We're not talking about your grandfather's socialism. In fact, there is a long list of past movements this new socialism is not. It is not class warfare. It is not anti-American; indeed, digital socialism may be the newest American innovation.
[MORE...]
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LOS ANGELES TIMES
May 22, 2009
BLOWBACK
Why is Charlotte Allen so mad at atheists?
By P.Z. Myers
She says it's because we're boring. More likely, it's because we speak out against the intellectually bankrupt beliefs of religion.
[MORE...]
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BLOGGING HEADS TV
May 22, 2009
Science Saturday: Cooking and Violence Edition
JOHN HORGAN
Stevens Center for Science Writings, JohnHorgan.org
RICHARD WRANGHAM
Harvard University
[MORE...]
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BOOKS FROM EDGE
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NOW AVAILABLE IN BOOKSTORES AND ONLINE
WHAT'S NEXT?
DISPATCHES ON THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE
Edited By Max Brockman
Vintage Books
http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Next-Dispatches-Future-Science/dp/0307389316
If these authors are the future of science, then the science of the future will be one exciting ride! Find out what the best minds of the new generation are thinking before the Nobel Committee does. A fascinating chronicle of the big, new ideas that are keeping young scientists up at night.
— Daniel Gilbert, author of STUMBLING ON NHAPPINESS
"A preview of the ideas you're going to be reading about in ten years."
- Steven Pinker, author of THE STUFF OF THOUGHT
"Brockman has a nose for talent."
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author THE BLACK SWAN
"Capaciously accessible, these writings project a curiosity to which followers of science news will gravitate." - BOOKLIST
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WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT
Edited by John Brockman
With An Introduction By BRIAN ENO
Harper Perennial
http://www.amazon.com/What-Have-Changed-Your-About/dp/0061686549
Praise for WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT?
The world's finest minds have responded with some of the most insightful, humbling, fascinating confessions and anecdotes, an intellectual treasure trove. ... Best three or four hours of intense, enlightening reading you can do for the new year. Read it now."
San Francisco Chronicle
"The splendidly enlightened Edge website (www.edge.org) has rounded off each year of inter-disciplinary debate by asking its heavy-hitting contributors to answer one question. I strongly recommend a visit." THE INDEPENDENT
"A great event in the Anglo-Saxon culture." EL MUNDO
"As fascinating and weighty as one would imagine." THE INDEPENDENT
"They are the intellectual elite, the brains the rest of us rely on to make sense of the universe and answer the big questions. But in a refreshing show of new year humility, the world's best thinkers have admitted that from time to time even they are forced to change their minds." THE GUARDIAN
"Even the world's best brains have to admit to being wrong sometimes: here, leading scientists respond to a new year challenge." THE TIMES
"Provocative ideas put forward today by leading figures." THE TELEGRAPH
The world's finest minds have responded with some of the most insightful, humbling, fascinating confessions and anecdotes, an intellectual treasure trove. ... Best three or four hours of intense, enlightening reading you can do for the new year. Read it now." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"As in the past, these world-class thinkers have responded to impossibly open-ended questions with erudition, imagination and clarity." THE NEWS & OBSERVER
"A jolt of fresh thinking...The answers address a fabulous array of issues. This is the intellectual equivalent of a New Year's dip in the lake - bracing, possibly shriek-inducing, and bound to wake you up." THE GLOBE & MAIL
"Answers ring like scientific odes to uncertainty, humility and doubt; passionate pleas for critical thought in a world threatened by blind convictions." THE TORONTO STAR
"For an exceptionally high quotient of interesting ideas to words, this is hard to beat. ...What a feast of egg-head opinionating!" NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
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This online EDGE edition with streaming video is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge287.html
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Edge Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
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EDGE
John Brockman, Editor and Publisher
Russell Weinberger, Associate Publisher
Karla Taylor, Editorial Assistant
Copyright (c) 2008 by EDGE Foundation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
Published by EDGE Foundation, Inc.,
5 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022
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