"John Brockman...the shadowy figure at the top the cyberfashion food chain." —Ted Nelson

THE EDGE BILLIONAIRES' DINNER
1998 — 2012

"Those present were the owners of Google, Twitter, Bill Gates, Benoit Mandelbrot (fractals), Craig Venter (Human Genome Project). Do I need to drop more names? A bomb at dinner and we would lose much of a certain creative intelligence that drives our world and our future, or the future that these people have created for all of us. The technologists have now become the center of power."

"Freeman Dyson and Jared Diamond, sharing the same room at the same space-time instant. How could their brains not explode from critical mass? This goes beyond all known schmoozing. This is like some kind of virtual-intellectual conspiracy-in-restraint-of-trade."

"The Billionaires' Dinner — row upon row of the world's most successful (and richest) human beings."

"...It didn't take long for an annual get-together ... to show mindboggling growth — in this case a change in its name from the Millionaires' Dinner to the Billionaires' Dinner... the crowd was sprinkled generously with those who had amassed wealth beyond imagining in a historical eye blink. The muscle and money behind tech stars such as Microsoft, America Online, Sun Microsystems and others ."

"... a microcosm of a newly dominant sector of American business. "

The TED Conference: 3 Days in the Future

It happened here one night last week over chicken and polenta at the annual private dinner, given by the New York literary agent John Brockman, formerly called the Millionaires' and Billionaires' Dinner after the rich techies who traditionally flocked to TED. There were still a few members of that endangered species scattered about, among them Nathan Myhrvold,

NEW YORK MAGAZINE
February, 2002

My Dinner with Rupert
By Michael Wolff

Rupert kept taking. He grew more expansive, more conspiratorial, even (although it did seem like he'd conspire with anyone), his commentary more intimate. We proposed that he come with us to the dinner we were scheduled to go to John Brockman's Billionaire's dinner ...

At the Growing Billionaires' Dinner, Tech Stars Move to Grown-Ups' Table

MONTEREY, Calif. — Like a lot of things in the frothy Internet world, it didn't take long for an annual get-together at one of the industry's trendiest conferences to show mindboggling growth —in this case a change in its name from the Millionaires' Dinner to the Billionaires' Dinner.

... the crowd was sprinkled generously with those who had amassed wealth beyond imagining in a historical eye blink. The muscle and money behind tech stars such as Microsoft, America Online, Sun Microsystems and others had gathered at the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference here.

When the host, New York literary agent John Brockman, added three zeros to the dinner last year, there was more than a bit of giggly discomfort among the attendees. The general agreement was that the provocative Mr. Brockman, who also runs a discussion Web site called Edge.org, was poking fun more than offering a description....

The weather, though, from San Francisco down the coast to Monterrey, where TED is held, turned bad, and it suddenly started to look like Brockman's dinner might be short a few billionaires.

It used to be the millionaires' dinner, but in the enthusiasm of the bull market, Brockman upped it a thousandfold (certainly, among the guests, there were a lot of millionaires — maybe everyone). Of course, the point is not the billionaires per se but the good fellowship that the idea of proximity to billionaires engenders. Does that fellowship disappear just because some billionaires don't want to take a chance on the weather?

You don't have to be a billionaire to get invited to the "Billionaire's Dinner" tonight in Monterey, Calif. But you do have to know literary agent/ author/ entrepreneur John Brockman, who makes it his business to know who is among the digerati. The dinner coincides with the 10th annual Technology, Entertainment, Design or TED, conference, which brings together Hollywood and Silicon Valley.....Last year's dinner guests included confirmed billionaires Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com Inc. and Steve Case of America Online Inc. as well as likely contender Nathan Myhrvold of Microsoft Corp.

It's just a fun gathering for a few of my friends," Mr. Brockman says. The stock market has made new billionaires out of some previous centimillionaire guests, so Mr. Brockman doubled the size of the dinner but claims he still has to turn people away. To add suspense to this year's event, Mr. Brockman promises two surprise billionaires who prefer to remain unidentified. Hint: at least one is unmarried.

World Domination, Corporate Cubism, and Alien Mind Control at the Digerati Dinner - 1998

Chronicler of the digerati, John Brockman, handpicked the best of breed at last week's Monterey TED (technology, entertainment, design) conference to attend his yearly soirée, where technology's philosopher-kings mused on all things Internet, multimedia.