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Home > EDGE Question 2007: What are you optimistic about?
[12.31.06]
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Each year, John Brockman's EDGE asks a single question for the new year, and publishes the responses online. For 2007:

What are you optimistic about? Why?

While conventional wisdom tells us that things are bad and getting worse, scientists and the science-minded among us see good news in the coming years. That's the bottom line of an outburst of high-powered optimism gathered from the world-class scientists and thinkers by EDGE, the influential online salon that features an ongoing conversation among third culture thinkers (i.e., those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.)

The 2007 EDGE Question marks the 10th anniversary of EDGE, which began in December, 1996 as an email to about fifty people. In 2006, EDGE had more than five million user sessions.

The responses to this year's EDGE Question span topics such as string theory, intelligence, population growth, cancer, climate and much much more. Among the 150 world-class thinkers contributing their optimistic visions are Daniel C. Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Freeman Dyson, Howard Gardner, Marc D. Hauser, W. Daniel Hillis, Ray Kurzweil, Steven Pinker, Lisa Randall, and J, Craig Venter.

EDGE Question 2007: What are you optimistic about? [1]

[2]

News From: 

BOING BOING [3]
Read the full article → [3]
[ Sun. Dec. 31. 2006 ]


Each year, John Brockman's EDGE [4] asks a single question for the new year, and publishes the responses online. For 2007:

What are you optimistic about? Why?

While conventional wisdom tells us that things are bad and getting worse, scientists and the science-minded among us see good news in the coming years. That's the bottom line of an outburst of high-powered optimism gathered from the world-class scientists and thinkers by EDGE [4], the influential online salon that features an ongoing conversation among third culture thinkers (i.e., those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.)

The 2007 EDGE Question marks the 10th anniversary of EDGE, which began in December, 1996 as an email to about fifty people. In 2006, EDGE had more than five million user sessions.

The responses to this year's EDGE Question span topics such as string theory, intelligence, population growth, cancer, climate and much much more. Among the 150 world-class thinkers contributing their optimistic visions are Daniel C. Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Freeman Dyson, Howard Gardner, Marc D. Hauser, W. Daniel Hillis, Ray Kurzweil, Steven Pinker, Lisa Randall, and J, Craig Venter.

People Mentions: 

Xeni Jardin [5]

Links:
[1] http://www.edge.org/news/edge-question-2007-what-are-you-optimistic-about-0
[2] http://is.gd/cfDW2h
[3] http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/01/edge_question_2007_w.html
[4] http://www.edge.org
[5] http://www.edge.org/memberbio/xeni_jardin