Back to Index Page

1998
"What Questions Are You Asking Yourself?"
"A site that has raised electronic discourse on the Web to a whole new level.... Genuine learning seems to be going on here." — Atlantic

1999
"What Is The Most Important Invention In The Past Two Thousand Years?"
"...Thoughtful and often surprising answers ....a fascinating survey of intellectual and creative wonders of the world ..... Reading them reminds me of how wondrous our world is." — Bill Gates, New York Times Syndicated Column

2000
"What Is Today's Most Important Unreported Story?"
"Don't assume for a second that Ted Koppel, Charlie Rose and the editorial high command at the New York Times have a handle on all the pressing issues of the day.... a lengthy list of profound, esoteric and outright entertaining responses. — San Jose Mercury News ("Web Site for Intellectuals Inspires Serious Thinking")

2001
"What Questions Have Disappeared?"
"Responses to this year's question are deliciously creative... the variety astonishes. Edge continues to launch intellectual skyrockets of stunning brilliance. Nobody in the world is doing what Edge is doing." (Arts & Letters Daily)

2001—9/11
What Now?
"INSPIRED ARENA: Edge has been bringing together the world's foremost scientific thinkers since 1998, and the response to September 11 was measured and uplifting."
(The Sunday Times)

2002
"What's Your Question?"
Brockman's thinkers of the "Third Culture," whether they, like Dawkins, study evolutionary biology at Oxford or, like Alan Alda, portray scientists on Broadway, know no taboos. Everything is permitted, and nothing is excluded from this intellectual game. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

"Big, deep and ambitious questions....breathtaking in scope. Keep watching The World Question Center." — New Scientist


2003

"What are the pressing scientific issues for the nation and the world, and what is your advice on how I can begin to deal with them?" — GWB


The following message is the basis for the 6th Annual Edge Question. I sent individualized emails to the third culture mail list as in the example below, addressed to Steven Pinker, the first participant to respond.

From:"John Brockman" <address restricted>
To: "Steven Pinker" <address restricted>
Subject: THE EDGE ANNUAL QUESTION — 2003
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
Importance: Normal

Steve,

This just in from Washington...

From: "George W. Bush" <address restricted>
To: "John Brockman" <address restricted>
Subject: Science Advisor
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002

Dear John,

I appreciate your taking the time to recommend the appointment of Steven Pinker to be my next science advisor and I am pleased to hear of his interest in the position.

I am impressed with the resume of Dr. Pinker which you sent earlier. Could you please ask him to prepare a memo which answers the following question:

"What are the pressing scientific issues for the nation and the world, and what is your advice on how I can begin to deal with them?"

In addition to obvious issues that have dominated the headlines during my first two years in office, I would hope to hear about less obvious scientific issues as well.

I need the memo by the end of December.

Thank you for your help.

Sincerely,

GWB

I wish the above was really an email from President Bush. It is not. It's the set-up for this year's Edge Annual Question — 2003, and because this event receives wide attention from the scientific community and the global press, the responses it evokes just might have the same effect as a memo to the President....that is, if you stick to science and to those scientific areas where you have expertise.

I am asking members of the Edge community to take this project seriously as a public service, to work together to create a document that can be widely disseminated to begin a public discussion about the important scientific issues before us.

Address your memo to the President and very briefly add your credentials (as in the example below). I will post the responses as they come in. Please email your response to me on or before January 1, 2003 for publication the week of January 6th.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best,

JB


Happy New Year!

John Brockman
Publisher & Editor
January 6, 2003

p.s. A selection of the responses below were excerpted by The New York Times Op-Ed Page on Saturday, January 4, 2003.


New Todd SilerPhilip BrockmanGeorge SmootJohn McWhorterSherry TurkleGregory BenfordVera John-SteinerPaul MacCreadyMargaret Wertheim
Ian WilmutJ. Craig VenterSteven PinkerRay KurzweilGino Segre Stephen SchneiderOliver MortonRodney BrooksSeth LloydDenis DuttonFreeman DysonPhilip Campbell Kevin KellyLawrence BrilliantMihalyi CsikszentmihalyiPaul DaviesRobert ShapiroJaron LanierJ. Doyne FarmerColin TudgeMarvin MinskyGeorge DysonWilliam H. Calvin David GelernterJanna Levin Howard GardnerMartin SeligmanRichard NisbettDavid LykkenAlison GopnikMarc D. Hauser Eric R. KandelK. Eric DrexlerJames J. O'DonnellMichael ShermerDaniel GolemanRichard Saul WurmanAndy ClarkJohn Horgan Roger C. SchankNancy EtcoffGerald HoltonJudith Rich HarrisBrian GoodwinKarl Sabbagh Joel Garreau Susan BlackmoreLeo ChalupaJordan PollackDavid MyersErnst Pöppel Lisa RandallStuart PimmEduardo PunsetLee SmolinRafael NunezTimothy TaylorMike WeinerLeon Lederman Bart KoskoAdam BlyRandolph NesseTerrence SejnowskiMary Catherine BatesonAlan AldaCliff BarneyDouglas RushkoffDonald D. HoffmanSteve GiddingsLance KnobelPiet HutRobert AungerChristine FinnDavid M. BussBeatrice GolombRupert SheldrakeDelta WillisClifford PickoverEberhard ZanggerSteven QuartzKeith DevlinJohn McCarthyGary F. Marcus Justin HallStephen Reucroft & John Swain

Press Suddeutsche ZeitungArts & Letters Daily SlashDotThe New York TimesThe Wall Street Journal


The Engine of Prosperity
Academics Demand a New Science Policy from Bush

by Andrian Kreye
January 14, 2003

Because the last decade brought forth not only scientific successes, but also a new scientific culture, the struggle for the future no longer takes place in privileged circles, but on the public stage...The worldview with the greatest profile in this regard is the "third culture," because it attempts to find scientific answers to the most important questions facing humanity. New York literary agent John Brockman coined the term...and conducts its most important debating club on his internet platform, Edge (http://www.edge.org).

[English translation | German original]
 


Ideas — Criticism — Debate
January 6, 2003


Essays and Opinion (Lead item)

If you had the President’s ear, what would you advise him was the most urgent scientific issue the country faces? Energy? Stem-cell research? Bioterror? Science teaching?... more»

2003 Edge.org World Question

The MediaPosted by timothy on Monday January 06, @04:15AM
from the what-would-sauron-do dept.
murky.waters writes "The responses to this year's Edge.org question have been published; basically, people were asked to imagine they were nominated as White House science adviser and the President asked them what are some important issues in science and what we should do about them. There are 84 responses, ranging in topic from advanced nanotechnology to the psychology of foreign cultures, and lots of ideas regarding science, technology, politics, and education. The responses were written by academics (e.g. Roger Schank, Marvin Minsky), journalists (Kevin Kelly), Nobel Laureates (Eric Kandel), and others (Alan Alda). Some of responses are politically loaded but the majority has either a more specialised proposal, or general remarks about our world. Many are absolutely fascinating: funny, insightful, interesting, hell even informative. ... One of the most public supporters of the Singularity 'religion', Ray Kurzweil, is a regular at Edge, and currently discussed issues range from said transhumanism to early-universe theories, and many other kinds of exciting and novel science." ( Read More...)




January 4, 2003

Today's Visions of the Science of Tomorrow

At the end of every year, John Brockman, a literary agent and the publisher of Edge.org, a Web site devoted to science, poses a question to leading scientists, writers and futurists. In 2002, he asked respondents to imagine that they had been nominated as White House science adviser and that President Bush had sought their answer to "What are the pressing scientific issues for the nation and the world, and what is your advice on how I can begin to deal with them?" Here are excerpts of some of the responses.

Mapping the Planet • Professor PlayStation • Little Geniuses • Think Small • Science Without Secrets • Fending Off the Big One • Intellectual Globalization • Cassandras of the Labs • Really Popular Science

[Click here for The New York Times Op-Ed page—free registration required]


SCIENCE JOURNAL
By SHARON BEGLEY
December 27, 2002

Dear W: Scientists Offer
President Advice on Policy


DEAR READER,

Congratulations! President George W. Bush is considering asking you to serve as his science adviser. He asks that you write him a memo addressing, "What are the pressing scientific issues for the nation and the world, and what is your advice on how I can begin to deal with them?"

So begins this year's online question from Edge, an e-salon of leading scientists and members of the "Third Culture" (in answer to C.P. Snow's scientists vs. humanists)...

This year—with smallpox vaccination, bioterror, stem-cell research, climate change, energy policy and missile defense dominating news—the annual question eschews intellectual posturing and gets down to practicalities...

...You can improve your own science education at www.edge.org, where the Edge memos will be available January 6.

[Click here for article—subscription required]


PClick here to read each of the contributions in an individually printable file


Responses

There's a simple story that sums up the perils of global terrorism. "Once there were two people sitting in a rowboat. One suddenly started making a hole on his side of the boat. The other screamed. The first countered and said, 'What do you care what I do on my side of the boat?'"

 Todd Siler

In your search for a new Science Advisor, I strongly recommend that you select an individual who has as much common sense as he or she has accomplishments in the sciences. Equally important, this open minded advisor needs to approach our world of interrelated problems with a systems view of things, which is something compartmentalized thinkers struggle with conceptually. This systems view is essential for effectively dealing with the web of gnarly problems that entangle nations and strain international relations.

In reviewing the list of challenging scientific issues that need your immediate attention, few strike me as being as important as fighting the war on terror. But fighting it to win in both the short and long run. As the world wrestles with how to best respond to terrorism in the wake of September 11—and as our nation grapples with the lethal threats of tyrants and their irrational actions—your advisory board needs to be as agile and open to the possibilities of a "chance discovery" as an inventor on the verge of a major breakthrough.

Sparking breakthrough thinking and accelerating innovation are two of my specialties and passions. If I was fortunate enough to serve as a member of your ad hoc committee on terrorism, I would suggest taking the following course of action:

I'd help organize a maverick group of professional thinkers (scientists, engineers, artists, educators, scholars, policy-makers, and polymaths), and invite them to delve into a pool of obvious and deep questions concerning national security.

I'd compare this exploratory work to the adventurous endeavors undertaken by the American military strategist and futurist, Herman Kahn, founder of the Hudson Institute think-tank and author of On Thermonuclear War. Ideally, I would hope to see the creative energies invested here parallel that of other intensely focused science-technology-civil society-oriented projects in the past; imagine a sort of Manhattan Project for Peaceful Solutions or a small scale Pugwash Conference (without any formal conference which comes with a certain structure that can inhibit the free exchange of ideas). Our group would scope out a long-term strategic vision for securing our nation and safeguarding the world from the projected charges and potential damage of "rogue elephants."

Note that we would engage in this collaborative envisioning activity using some unconventional, yet proven, techniques of communication that involve symbolic modeling. One outcome of this work would be a set of tactical, implementation plans. These practical plans could then be evaluated and contrasted with the research-based recommendations of groups such as the Rand Corporation, among other solution providers.

They could also be run through the mill of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis, a business practice I'm quite familiar with having facilitated many strategic planning sessions for executive officers of Fortune 500 Companies.

The types of open-ended questions this ad hoc group might consider responding to could include the following:

• How do we foresee the forces of terrorism growing during this decade? How will this growth impact our collective future? Describe these forces.

• What are some non-military solutions for stemming further acts of aggression against our principles and practices of democracy?

• How will this constant presence of terrorism profoundly affect the American way of life as well as our dreams for improving the state of the world?

• How will terrorism affect our advanced warfare programs and defense policies?

• Is there any way to avoid the inevitable build up of weapons of mass destruction in defense of by attacking civil liberties and basic human rights for all?

• How can our world community do a better job of policing renegade groups of people and organizations whose raison d'etre seems to be to spread anarchy and other forms of social unrest?

• Other than U.N. disarmament resolutions, what additional agreements would we need to have securely in place in order to begin to abolish of chemical and biological warfare (CBW) programs? Specifically, how will the advancement of these programs help our prospects for a lasting peace?

• What benefits will the next generation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons "offer" us which an improvement in human communication cannot?

These are merely a handful of basic questions that come to mind at the moment. Any one of them could be explored by this group of thinkers using the tools of science and common sense to solve this gravest of problems: fighting a war on terror that doesn't perpetuate the cycle of violence but rather prevents it by fostering a new understanding. The main task of this group would be to find more ingenious ways of dismantling this Gordian Knot of political, ideological and religious beliefs other than reaching into that old Pandora's Box and taking out another weapon to whack away at our worst primal fears.

Clearly we have much more scientific work to do to better understand the nature of fear and terror, and to recognize the patterns of ineffective responses to these phenomena. Whenever our brute fears overpower our rationality trouble abounds.

Finally, we need to explore our deepest, most ambiguous questions about the roots of terrorism that have as much to do with science as they do with philosophy and religion. Naturally, your new Science Advisor needs to handle this reality with the utmost sensitivity. And the advisory board needs to value the fact that there's always more than one viable solution to any given problem, when viewed from many perspectives. Without this broader and deeper exploration, our world may remain pinned and pained by the headlock we're in.

There's a simple story that sums up the perils of global terrorism. "Once there were two people sitting in a rowboat. One suddenly started making a hole on his side of the boat. The other screamed. The first countered and said, 'What do you care what I do on my side of the boat?'" I thank you for caring about the hole in our boat. Now you need to get the rest of the world on board about caring too.

Todd Siler
Founder & Director, Psi-Phi Communications, LLC.
Former advisory board member of the Council on Art, Science, Technology at M.I.T.
Author of Think Like A Genius and Breaking the Mind Barrier


The type of research we pursue is not as important as the horizon.

Philip Brockman

Today I retire from 43-year career as a physicist for NASA. I look back to when I began working at Langley Research Center in 1959. At that time, NASA research centers had a base program and there was no expectation that our research was to be applied. My goal at that time was to work on long term problems and solutions.

The current method in government research is to work on projects with a one or two year payoff. This is where our nation's corporations have gone in the last few years. Government is now following corporate America's lead in pursuing instant gratification rather than research which reaches over the horizon. It is now an MBA-driven culture, one which is anithetical to the long horizon stuff that inevitably leads to future breakthroughs.

I have had a wonderful career at NASA and I've been at the edge as I watched research from our laboratories change the world. But I am not pleased with the direction the agency is now pursuing, and I regret that a young physicist now beginning his or her career will not have the same opportunities I have had to dream, to explore their vision. This is to the detriment of NASA and to our nation.

The one big lesson I have learned in 43 years as a scientific researcher: the type of research we pursue is not as important as the horizon.

Philip Brockman
Physicist
Distinguished Research Associate
NASA—Langley Research Center


  Science and the nation are inextricably intertwined. The economic and military strength of the county is based upon the technologies that have sprung from our basic science research. Likewise our medical system is fully dependent on a mixture of medical research and physical sciences detector development. Thus the health, well being, safety of our country's citizens depends very directly on the technological fruits of scientific research.

George F. Smoot

Dear President Bush,

Standard Long Term Analysis in Style of Business and Government

Science and the nation are inextricably intertwined. The economic and military strength of the county is based upon the technologies that have sprung from our basic science research. Likewise our medical system is fully dependent on a mixture of medical research and physical sciences detector development. Thus the health, well being, safety of our country's citizens depends very directly on the technological fruits of scientific research.

If the USA is to remain the premier nation on Earth, then it must maintain a robust scientific research program. The appropriate level is open to societal debate; however, many businesses, e.g. drug companies and advanced electronic companies, have developed guidelines at a few percent of their total budget. The issue is not can the country afford this level of expense, but whether it can afford not to continue an active, high-quality basic research program.

In terms of defense this is obvious. One only needs to ask the question: What would be the consequence if some other country to develop a new energy-directed or new generation bio-weapon, before the US did and created countermeasures? However, that same thing is true for major new technologies in the economic and health arenas? Basic scientific research is so key to the long-term viability of the nation, that even though the pay off is often years out, it is current priority. Change can be so rapid in technology that ten years is often two generations.

A strong scientific research program is not sufficient alone. Clearly, there must be sufficient infrastructure. The most key ingredient is a scientifically literate work force and general population. Just as it is clearly wise to invest in science, investment in education (science, mathematics, critical thinking) is better than exporting technical jobs, electronically or otherwise, to other countries (e.g. India, Russia, etc.) with stronger educational systems. No matter how good an infrastructure the nation has, it still must have the people to run it and the scientists and engineers to create and design the next generations. It is hard to believe that the country would hire foreign mercenaries for military and daily operations.

At present we enjoy a very good lifestyle. The primary question for the nation and civilization as a whole is: What is it that allows this? What has been the big change since the stone age? What steps can we take to keep this and progress to the next level? Are humans smarter, harder working, or any another way significantly better raw material now than in the stone age? One surmises most of the difference in physical attributes can be ascribed to better nutrition and medical care.

The Human Future for Stone-Age Man?

It appears in fact that most humans use our technological infrastructure to live a lifestyle with which a stone-age human could readily identify. People live in shelters—houses or apartments rather than caves. The go out daily to make their livelihood—now in SUVs, cars, commuter trains rather than most by foot. People gather by electronic fires (TV) or in bars ­most probably more isolated than the stone-age clans. In general the bulk of people live in, exploit, and make up a large cultural and technological infrastructure. They take advantage of the base accumulated by humanity.

Nearly all the advances are made by a very small fraction of the population—the innovators—mostly scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs. The society and nation, which encourages, nurtures, and makes this innovation possible and exploits it, will proper in many ways.

Humans as a whole really have not have changed basically since the stone age. Natural selection has not really changed humans since humans became the dominant species. In some regions local culture has instilled in its people respect for law and human life but even in those places the people will go to war when threatened. Other regions tribal and clan clashes are a way of life.

If the bulk of humans have not advanced physically, intellectually and socially over the stone age milieu, then new technology can be as easily used for terrorist and criminal activities as for neutral and beneficial activities. Thus as technology improves, the potential for devastating acts of terrorism continues to increase. The logical end would be when it is possible for a small group or single individual to destroy all life on Earth.

For economic, medical, and likely military motivations it is likely that many areas of technology will continue to develop and its potential for positive or negative consequences will increase. This means that, if humans are not changed significantly physically different, then we must understand how to develop a world culture that rejects suicide attacks and then eventually violence to resolve conflict. This would requires a whole program: (1) a better understanding of why people form cults and groups that support such activities, (2) understanding and removing the reservoir of young people (e.g. HAMAS recruits, Jim Jones cult,) (3) demagogic and totalitarian leaders and societies. This is a mixture of social and political science studies and actual programs.

The first step is to assess the various issues and determine what programs can be put in place in the short run and what research should begin soon. Then developing a longer-term program to reduce the threat of terrorism both by technical robustness and by social efforts. Note that El Al is most successful through focusing on the people rather than relying on sophisticated technology. Intelligence comes first and then attention to people. We would prefer not to be in the position of Israel as a country suffering terrorist activities on a very frequent and regular basis. It costs much in terms of casualties, economic, and military activities without any end in sight.

As long as terrorism can be kept at a low level in the country, then the USA can continue most of its development including the scientific research for the future. We also need to invest in the twin programs of being robust against terrorist acts and an active program to convert potential terrorists into positively contributing members of society. Rather than nation building we must engage in civilization building.

The path I did not mention was to stop or slow dramatically scientific research and the development of new technologies and hope or search for a new stability. We cannot stop things completely because other countries already have significant scientific and technological capability. Already third-rate countries, such as Iraq and North Korea, are able to have advanced welcome programs. We could enter new dark ages, the Nuclear Dark Ages or Weapons of Mass Destruction Dark Ages. I don't mean nuclear winter from the exchange of thousands of nuclear weapons; but a more gradual but catastrophe filled deterioration. In the new Dark Ages there will be a repeat of regional wars, blackmail and spoils of war, occasional small nuclear exchanges, all of these leading to a spiraling down of civilization.

George F. Smoot
Professor of Physics
University of California at Berkeley
Leader. NASA's COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) Team
Author (with Keay Davidson) of Wrinkles In Time


  The typical college student who has studied Arabic for a year has essentially learned how to decode text and utter simple sentences—which is useless in decoding a memo written in running script by a terrorist, or even in understanding a speech by an Arab official.

John H. McWhorter

Dear President Bush:

Recent geopolitical events bring into sharp relief the inadequacy of foreign language training in the United States. I am dismayed by the inability of our high schools and universities to impart a truly useful competence in foreign languages to any but the most self-directed and dedicated of students.

Obviously, our country is in dire need of people proficient in Arabic, to assist us in defending ourselves against Islamicist terrorists. The shortage of such people in the FBI, CIA, and Foreign Service is truly chilling, as we see days go by before we even have worthy translations of Arabic-language statements and documents.

Yet not only are few institutions of learning equipped to impart Arabic to students, but even fewer are equipped to do so at anything beyond an elementary level that will serve little use in the urgent circumstances that confront us.

This is an especially serious problem with Arabic, a language that seems to present a virtual hydra-head of challenges. The script is elaborate, takes a great deal of practice to master, and only approximately spells out the sounds of words. The vocabulary is too different from English's to ease learning through ample cognates (opportunity/opportunidad in Spanish, milk/Milch in German). And on top of this, spoken Arabic varies from country to country to the point that Egyptians, for example, speak essentially a different language from Moroccans, and all of the spoken varieties are almost as different from the written one as French and Spanish are from Latin. The typical college student who has studied Arabic for a year has essentially learned how to decode text and utter simple sentences—which is useless in decoding a memo written in running script by a terrorist, or even in understanding a speech by an Arab official.

Military institutions, and other bodies with a concrete reason for teaching their charges foreign languages well, such as religious bodies, have long used truly effective, intense language-learning programs that produce competent foreign language speakers. It is also clear that European countries regularly give their students a solid grounding in English that has always been the envy of Americans. For years, I have been amazed at how an obscure series of books published by the Assimil company in Europe can give the solitary learner a decent conversational competence in any language in just six months of home study, so cleverly are the lessons arranged to impart what is really needed to speak the language in real life.

But meanwhile, school textbooks, for all their claims to teach "the language as it is really spoken", continue in a tradition of foreign language teaching descended from conceptions of grammar based on how Latin happens to be constructed, imparting tiny vocabularies ("my uncle is a lawyer but my aunt has a spoon") and rarely lending the learner any genuine sense of the "feel" of how native speakers actually put living sentences together. Language training rarely affords the student any serious time speaking the language at length on meaningful subjects. It is common to come away from several years of classes in, say, French or Spanish unable to even carry on a simple conversation with a native. Language training that leaves the student unable to say "This smells like a rose", "Never mind", "The car is stuck in the mud" or "Take your feet off the table"—sentences that eight years of dedicated French "teaching" left me unable to render—does not deserve the name.

The time has passed when our country could afford for excellent language teaching to be limited to circumstances lending specialized training to a few. Language teaching schools like Berlitz, the military, and even findings from academic specialists in second-language teaching have long bypassed our schools and universities in foreign language teaching. In our moment, it is high time that an effort on a nationwide scale be made to not only impart foreign languages to students, but to do it in an effective way.

And in these times, our efforts must be focused as much on languages like Chinese, Arabic, and Persian as the "old standby" languages like French, Spanish and German. Our geopolitical situation requires this, and the marvelous ethnic mixture of our country since the Immigration Act of 1965 renders it even more urgent, in helping to foster understanding and exchange in a new kind of America.

Sincerely,

John H. McWhorter
Associate Professor of Linguistics, UC Berkeley
Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute
Author of Losing The Race: Self-Sabotage In Black America and
The Power Of Babel: A Natural History Of Language.


 Advocate technology as a learning partner across the curriculum. This strategy is important for improving learning, developing computer literacy, and for inviting a variety of users, including girls, into technology.

Sherry Turkle

The Gender Gap In The Computer Culture

There has been much interest in the digital divide as it pertains to inequities between the poor and the rich. There is another digital divide that threatens to limit scientific productivity and scope. This is the inequity in the numbers of women who participate in the computer culture. The computer culture is still, in the main, made by engineers for engineers and by men for men. Girls are less likely to take high-level computing classes in high school, and comprised just 17 percent of those taking Advanced Placement Computer Science exams. Girls outnumbered boys only in their enrollment in "word processing" classes, arguably the contemporary version of a typing class. In 1995, at the post-secondary level, women received one in four of the Computer/Information Sciences bachelor's degrees and only 11 percent of the Ph.D.'s in Engineering-related technologies. These educational gaps reverberate in the workplace, where by most estimates women today occupy only 20 percent of the jobs in Information Technology.

A recent study of middle school and high school girls, commissioned by the American Association of University Women made it clear that gender inequity in digital culture is increasing. One goal is to get more girls into the "pipeline" to computer-related careers. This could, of course, be an end in itself, but diversity in participation would also mean a richer digital culture. Digital culture (not so far away from a world that asked users if they wanted to "abort, terminate, or fail" processes running on their machines) could be positively transformed through the integration of girls' and women's insights and life experiences. So one of the values in getting more girls and women interested in the computer pipeline is that their greater presence may transform the computer culture overall; by the same token, changes in the e-culture itself—the ways technology is discussed, valued, and applied—would invite more girls and women to participate fully in that culture, to become computer fluent.

This comment on values reflects the fact that today women seem to be disenfranchised in the computer culture for cultural rather than intellectual reasons. When young women are asked about their attitudes towards computing they almost never report overt discrimination, but at the same time, when asked to describe a person who is "really good with computers" they describe a man. And most of them do not predict that they will want to learn more about or become more involved with computers in the future. These girls are not computer phobic, they are "computer reticent." They say that they are not afraid but simply do not want to get involved. They express a "we can, but I don't want to" philosophy. Girls' views of computer careers, and of the computer culture—including software, games, and Internet environments—tend to reproduce stereotypes about a "computer person" as male and antisocial, Women no longer (as they once did) see computing as "too hard" for them. Earlier generations of women said, Women can't be involved in technical professions, "We can't but I want to." Girls and young women today seem to be saying, Women can do computing, "We can, but I don't want to!" This position is usually accompanied by a characterization of the computer as it has been presented to them at school as infused with values that they cannot identify with. Simply put: the computer culture is presented as a world which emphasizes technical capacity, speed, and efficiency. It estranges a broad array of learners, many girls included, who do not identify with the wizardry of computer aficionados and have little interest in the purely technical aspects of the machines. The computer culture has become linked to a characteristically masculine worldview, such that women too often feel they need to choose between the cultural associations of "femininity" and those of "computers," a cliché that has proven resistant to the growing diversity of information technology and its users. Girls discuss information technology-related careers not as too difficult, but as a "waste of intelligence." Insists a young woman from Baltimore, "Guys just like to do that: sit in a cubicle all day." In talking about their lack of desire to continue learning about computers, girls also focus on the violence and cruelty of current video games and see a culture that they do not want to participate in. They are happy to play social simulation games and chat with their friends, but see their identity on the computer as that of "users," not the empowered.

Their teachers have given them little to inspire them. Teacher education has stressed the "technical" side of things: Education schools tend to give instruction in basic technical skills rather than on how to integrate computers into the curriculum. A 1999 national survey found that only 29 percent of teachers had six or more hours of curriculum-integration instruction, whereas 42 percent had that amount of basic-skills training. In the study by the American Association of University Women of 2000, only 30% of teachers ranked as "sophisticated" in their use of computers report that they received any technology training in an undergraduate or master's teacher education program, which probably reflects in part responses from older teachers. Only 11 percent of the total teachers who were polled report that they received training specifically in how to apply or integrate computer technology into their lesson plans. Thus, current teacher-training practices emphasize short technical courses on connectivity and hardware. Preservice teachers make it clear that they start their jobs uninformed about what the technology is supposed to accomplish for their classrooms, either educationally or socially.

Our current approach to teacher training focuses on the technical properties of hardware; it does not emphasize educational applications or innovative uses of computing across the curriculum. Yet what teachers need is sustained and ongoing education about how to integrate technology with curricular materials and information about how to make technology part of a humanistic classroom culture, so essential for bringing girls into the picture. This latter approach would create better informed teachers as well as multiple entry points to computer competence for both students and teachers. The prevailing emphasis on the "mechanics of computer operation" does not respond to this need. As one teacher put it: "Without teacher education, it won't matter if each student has his/her own computer. We teachers hate having thousands of dollars of equipment thrown at us and being told to use it when we have no clue how to go about it"

There are many points of entry to address this problem. All require research and educational imagination in curriculum planning. All would make the computer culture more vibrant and relevant for women as well as men, and ultimately for us all.

• Advocate technology as a learning partner across the curriculum. This strategy is important for improving learning, developing computer literacy, and for inviting a variety of users, including girls, into technology. The infusion of technology across the curriculum also recognizes and supports multiple entry points into technology. Some learners may develop a fluency with information technology through music, some through mathematics, and others through the arts.

• Enforce a distinction between using the computer as a tool (teaching students how to use powerpoint) and using computation to inspire new ways of thinking and learning. It is the second that will inspire young minds to believe that there are rich rewards in staying with the subject.

• Professional development for teachers, both preservice and inservice, needs to emphasize not simply how computer technology works but on how it can spark creativity across disciplines. There appear to be a group of learners, predominantly young men, who are willing to throw themselves into computing, presented as a technical puzzle. But given the integration of computing into culture, those in the field need to have broader interests and motivation for being there. Improving the way computation is introduced in education will thus not only draw in young women and keep them from dropping out, it holds our only chance of having a more broadly based computer culture for all of us.

Sherry Turkle
Director, Initiative on Technology and Self
MIT
Author of Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet and The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit.


 Rather than fixate on controlling greenhouse gases, which are politically hard to suppress, I suggest a new, innovative research program directed at the central global problem: warming. A partial cure can come from simple methods, until now little studied.

Gregory Benford

Mr President:

Prudence alone should lead you to ask the scientific establishment to study new, less costly methods of dealing with a global problem—the possibility of climate change. It is time to require more inventive thinking on this issue.

In his recent letter to you, William Calvin pointed out that shifting ocean currents could trigger big shifts in weather. Rather than fixate on controlling greenhouse gases, which are politically hard to suppress, I suggest a new, innovative research program directed at the central global problem: warming. A partial cure can come from simple methods, until now little studied.

They are:

1) Increase the overall reflection of sunlight from the planet as a whole. Here simple methods may work well. Trigger more cloud cover over the tropical oceans. Color rooftops and blacktop roads lighter, to lessen absorption. These ideas are fairly simple, and some field work on them has been done. They do need study to make them efficient and effective.

2) Hide carbon in the deep oceans. This keeps it from making carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for about 1000 years. Most biospheric carbon is already in the oceans anyway, and they can take a good deal more.

3) Push innovative energy research. Hand Ray Orbach at DOE the paper by Hoffert et al, in Science 298, (p 981, 2002) and ask him to implement its suggestions. You should also probably help develop nuclear power in the most needy areas of the developing nations. With safeguards against nuclear proliferation, this could cut down on the default choice many are using—coal burning plants.

These approaches need further research, and should be fashioned into off-the-shelf technologies. If in the next decade alarm bells go off, warning of an approaching big wrench in our global climate, we can then reach for these methods. Whatever one's position on global warming, it is prudent to be prepared with a strategy that goes beyond just nay-saying to the Kyoto Protocols.

Gregory Benford
Professor of Physics at University of California, Irvine
Author of Deep Time


 The problem of political and religious fanaticism is beyond the scope separately of psychology, political science, or historical study. An interdisciplinary program building upon current efforts but addressing the issues with the use of multiple methods is needed.

Vera John-Steiner

For a while after the defeat of Fascism and Nazism in the Second World War, there was a hope for an era of enlightenment. It was thought that a scientific understanding of its sources could help avoid a repetition of the fascist nightmare. The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor Adorno and co authors was a well known effort to achieve such understanding.

Today political and religious fanaticisms are a source of world wide anxiety. Al Qaeda is the most frightening at present. But it is not only Islamic fanaticism that leads to atrocities. The Oklahoma City bombing, mass murders of Moslems by Hindu mobs in India, the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin in Israel and of Martin Luther King in Nashville were the work of non-Islamic fanatics.

The torture-murder of a young gay man in Wyoming, the bombing of abortion clinics, the torching of black churches and of Jewish synagogues, all were associated with fanatical beliefs and movements.

Legislative, military, and educational solutions are proposed and undertaken, but without any prior understanding of how fanaticism is being fostered, both wittingly and unwittingly, or what causes certain fanatical individuals to resort to individual or mass murder. Neither is it well understood what factors or measures might counteract or inhibit fanatical violence. At present, specialists concerned with these issues focus either on social antecedents (including political, economic and religious factors) or on personality variables .
.
The problem of political and religious fanaticism is beyond the scope separately of psychology, political science, or historical study. An interdisciplinary program building upon current efforts but addressing the issues with the use of multiple methods is needed. Such a proposal is made while recognizing that no single approach, however carefully planned, can fully meet the challenge of fanaticism in contemporary society. But a major and well-planned study, devoted to causes and solutions, could make a contribution to the urgent task of decreasing fanatical violence. President Bush should initiate such a program as a scientific response to the sense of incomprehension and despair so prevalent in the world at present.

Vera John-Steiner
Presidential Professor, University of New Mexico
Author of Notebooks of the Mind and Creative Collaboration


Civilization's rocketing growth comes from exploiting non-renewables: coal since 1800 and oil since 1900, for example. US oil peaked about 15 years ago; global supplies should peak in about 10-15 years. There are semi-practical alternatives available or at least conceivable to let us get by on renewables, but virtually no one really sees the importance.

Paul B. MacCready

The world can support 1.5 to 2.0 billion people continuously, in combination with a natural world. Right now we have 6.2 billion people. The total mass of vertebrates on land and in the air is now made up 98% by humans+livestock+pets, and 2% by all natural creatures. Ten thousand years ago the 98% was only under 0.1%. Civilization's rocketing growth comes from exploiting non-renewables: coal since 1800 and oil since 1900, for example. US oil peaked about 15 years ago; global supplies should peak in about 10-15 years. There are semi-practical alternatives available or at least conceivable to let us get by on renewables, but virtually no one really sees the importance.

Virtually all your correspondents focus on details of how to make humans better and more numerous. Very few examine civilization's growth and the world as would a creature from space visiting us every few thousand years. Sincerely yours,

Paul B. MacCready
Chairman/Founder of AeroVironment Inc.
The "Father of Human-Powered Flight"


In a climate of growing religious fundamentalism and rising skepticism about science, the scientific community itself has began to understand the importance of reaching out to the wider public.

Margaret Wertheim

Dear Mr. President

Of all the scientific issues currently confronting us it seems to me that one is paramount—the woeful state of the public understanding of science in our nation. Some of your other correspondents have already raised this issue and I concur with much of what they have said. But I would like to bring to your attention a further dimension of the problem—the degree to which ignorance about science is correlated with gender, age, race and socioeconomic position.

At present the serious science readership in the USA is estimated to be around 1.5 million people, the combined subscriber base to our 2 major popular science publications, Discover and Scientific American. Readers of these and other science-based magazines are well served and scientifically fluent. But who precisely are these readers? Overwhelmingly they are white, male, over 35, well educated (often employed in science and technology fields) and in the upper socioeconomic brackets. This 1.5 million people constitutes just a little more than half a percent of our population, yet they are the audience at whom almost all scientific publishing is aimed. This is also the readers at whom science book publishers pitch their wares. The question I would like to raise is what about the other 99% of our population?

In a climate of growing religious fundamentalism and rising skepticism about science, the scientific community itself has began to understand the importance of reaching out to the wider public. Yet for all the admirable rhetoric on this subject, most science communication continues to be aimed at an already-well-informed audience. What I would like to propose, Mr President, is the establishment of a National Office for the Public Understanding of Science—an organization that would be charged with responsibility for reaching out to the "other 99", those who at present read almost no science and who, as polls continue to show, are almost universally ignorant about the subject. Such an office would have as its mission the task of finding and supporting truly innovative ways to communicate about science outside the box.

One major group of people who are disenfranchised from science are women. One of the tasks for our proposed National Office could be to explore ways in which science might be made more accessible and exciting to women. It is a sad but true fact that few women read science magazines, yet women buy and read an enormous number of magazines per se. One thing our office might explore then is ways to get science content into women's magazines such as Vogue, Elle and Glamour. What about science programs on television that might appeal to women? At present almost all the science on television is watched by men—is it possible that there are other ways of presenting science on TV that might also appeal to a female audience?

Another task our office might consider is ways in which scientific organizations could be partnered with cultural organizations such as art galleries and museums. So often science is presented as an isolated activity, but like all human enterprises science takes place within the context of the wider social and cultural spectrum. One way to draw more people into science, I believe, is to bring them through the portal of their other interests. There are, for example, many artists today producing work based around scientific themes—genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and computation in particular. This work, and the immense interest in the arts world in scientific issues right now, constitutes a formidable resource. Our office could work to create links between artists and scientists in specific areas of mutual interest.

We urgently need to improve our nation's pool of scientific literacy. If we are serious about achieving this goal we must be serious about reaching out to those who are disenfranchised. That means taking seriously who those people are and how to speak to them effectively. 99% of our people is too large an audience to ignore—it is no good sitting around demanding that they come to science—science must find ways to go out to them!

Margaret Wertheim
Science writer and Commentator
Author of Pythagoras' Trousers and The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet.


Biomedical research in the United States has a distinguished record of contributing to knowledge and to new medical treatments. In the same way, research with cells derived from cloned human embryos will offer unique opportunities to study many extremely unpleasant diseases, perhaps one day to have treatments for these diseases and also to produce safer medicines. This research cannot be carried out in any other way.

Ian Wilmut

Mr President,

Biomedical research in the United States has a distinguished record of contributing to knowledge and to new medical treatments. In the same way, research with cells derived from cloned human embryos will offer unique opportunities to study many extremely unpleasant diseases, perhaps one day to have treatments for these diseases and also to produce safer medicines. This research cannot be carried out in any other way.

The diseases include motor neurone disease, diabetes and genetic causes of sudden heart failure. Researchers could learn a great deal about these diseases if they could study in the laboratory the cells that are affected by the disease. Later they would assess the effects of drugs upon the malfunctioning cells. One day it may also be possible use cells from cloned embryos to treat unpleasant degenerative diseases by supplying replacement cells for those that have been damaged in diseases such as diabetes or heart failure.

Each year thousands of people in the USA are killed by taking medicines, even if the medicine was prescribed and used appropriately. This is because people differ in the way that they react to drugs. Pharmaceutical companies would be able to reduce this risk to us all and design drugs to be safer and more effective if they could study these differences in function of liver cells. At present the only source of such cells for research is the liver of casualties, if the organ is not suitable for transfer to a patient. Liver cells with these important differences in responses to drugs could be derived from cloned embryos and be used first to study these genetic differences and then to design better drugs and to establish the basis for personalised treatments.

There is no fully effective treatment for any of these conditions and in some cases none at all. We all know people affected by them and may fall victim ourselves, as we get older. In these circumstances, it would be a tragedy if concern over the unsubstantiated claims of the birth of a cloned child led to legislation that prohibited these important research projects.

By contrast there is every reason to encourage legislation to prohibit the production of children by cloning. Apart from the many ethical and social concerns the evidence from experiments with animals all points to the conclusion that the likely outcome of attempts to clone humans would include late abortions, the birth of dead children and of abnormal live children. As there is no way to avoid this tragic outcome it is important that legislation is enacted as soon as possible to prohibit such attempts.

I urge you to distinguish between these two uses of the cloning procedure, to allow the research that has the potential to be so beneficial, while prohibiting the misguided attempts to produce children.

Ian Wilmut
Professor and Head of Department of Gene Expression and Development at the Roslin Institute
Leader of the team that cloned Dolly the sheep in 1966 (The first animal to be cloned from an adult cell).
Coauthor (with Colin Tudge & Keith Campbell) of The Second Creation; author of After Dolly: The Uses and Misuses of Cloning (forthcoming).


With the genetic material in hand of organisms such as human, mouse, and fruit fly, researchers now have the opportunity to understand these complex creatures so that we may one day better treat disease, fully understand evolutionary biology, and thus understand the most fundamental aspects of life and how we as humans function.

J. Craig Venter

Dear President Bush:

At no time in our history is science more important in our society and thus to your administration than now. We have made exciting and promising advances in so many areas of scientific and medical research yet we still have so much to learn. This is especially true in the rapidly growing field of genomics.

In just the last 10 years we have gone from having the complete genetic map of just a few microbes to today having completed the sequencing of more than 100 organisms. With the genetic material in hand of organisms such as human, mouse, and fruit fly, researchers now have the opportunity to understand these complex creatures so that we may one day better treat disease, fully understand evolutionary biology, and thus understand the most fundamental aspects of life and how we as humans function.

The future is indeed bright but only if we have a science-literate administration to help translate this basic research into potential treatments. With these great advances also come tough ethical issues. But we must not become mired in these debates nor let fear and ignorance win out over progress for us all. While I cannot accept the offer to be science advisor I would like to outline a few ideas for your administration to consider.

There are three key areas that need immediate attention:

• 1) Revamping the health care system using genomics and other predictive tools to move toward a preventative medicine based system.

• 2) Stepping up our efforts in developing deterrents and defensive mechanisms to overcome the biological warfare threat to humans and agriculture.

• 3) Moving as rapidly as possible toward a hydrogen-based economy.

Our health care system is suffering from double digit inflation while the number of uninsured and underinsured continues to rise beyond any acceptable level for a civilized nation. We have now the potential to dramatically change the cost of health care by using the new predictive tools that will come from the genomics revolution. It is imperative that we make the commitment to go the less costly route of preventing and limiting the extent of disease rather than treating symptoms after they occur as we do now.

On this same preventative theme we can greatly diminish or effectively eliminate the threat of bioterrorism by using the modern tools of genomics to more quickly and accurately detect a suspect agent including genetically modified organisms; develop new effective vaccines without the risk profile associated with current small pox and anthrax vaccines; and develop new effective antivirals and antibiotics.

While your administration has made great progress in providing new funding for these efforts, more direct funding for the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) at the NIH will move this field faster.

Despite much discussion on the topic of alternative energy solutions, the United States continues to rely almost exclusively on fossil fuels. According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) approximately 80 percent of all human-caused carbon dioxide emissions currently come from fossil fuel combustion. The DOE also estimates that world carbon dioxide emissions are projected to rise from 6.1 billion metric tons carbon equivalent in 1999 to 7.9 billion metric tons per year in 2010 and to 9.9 billion metric tons in 2020.

This continued consumption of fossil fuels is ample evidence that there is a growing need to eliminate carbon dioxide output into the environment and capture back some of the carbon dioxide associated with global warming. Recent climate modeling from Scripps Institute of Oceanography suggests that if climate change is allowed to continue unabated a temperature increase of just two degrees will be enough to dramatically reduce annual snowfall and ultimately food production due to the drought that will develop in our most important agricultural states.

As a nation we must invest in finding new solutions for our energy needs. I believe that genomics could provide a viable avenue for alleviating some of the problems associated with carbon-based fuels.

I believe it is imperative that we push forward on all the fronts outlined above to insure energy independence, national security, and an improved environment, health and well-being for future generations.

Sincerely

J. Craig Venter
Pioneer in sequencing the human genome
President of the Center for the Advancement of Genomics
President and Chairman, J. Craig Venter Science Foundation


Your father called himself "the education president," and you have promised new educational policies in which"no child is left behind."

Steven Pinker

Dear President Bush,

Your father called himself "the education president," and you have promised new educational policies in which "no child is left behind." These affirmations of the centrality of education in a modern democracy are admirable. As our economy comes to depend increasingly on technology, and as modern media present us with unprecedented choices – in our lifestyles, our workplaces, and our political commitments – a child who cannot master an ever-increasing body of skills and knowledge will be left farther and farther behind.

Unfortunately, the goals of the Presidents Bush are not being realized. Most debates about education in this country focus on issues of administration: vouchers, charter schools, class size, teachers’ unions, budgets, high-stakes testing. Fewer have focused on the actual process of education: how events in the classroom affect the minds of the pupils. This is an area in which science – in particular, the sciences of mind – can make crucial contributions.

Your immediate predecessor was enthusiastic about applying research on the brain to education and child development. But as exciting as the field of basic neuroscience is, I suspect it will provide few insights into the process of education. All learning must change the brain, but the changes at the level of brain cells are pretty much the same in all complex organisms -- including mice, which don’t learn to read, write, or add. It is the patterns of changes across billions of neurons that determine the distinctively human forms of learning that face us in the classroom, and to understand them we need to understand how intact human beings perceive, think, and act. These topics are the province of the sciences of mind, particularly cognitive science, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, behavioral genetics, and evolutionary psychology, must be brought to bear on education in a more systematic way than has happened so far.

First and foremost, we must apply a scientific mindset to the educational process. People outside of the educational establishment are often shocked to learn how little in instructional practice has been evaluated using the standard paraphernalia of social science–control groups, random assignment, data collection, statistics. Instead, classroom practice is set by fads, romantic theories, slick packages, and political crusades. We already know that some methods of teaching reading work better than others; we need more of these assessments, and faster implementations of what works into classroom settings.

Second, the sciences of mind can provide a sounder conception of human nature, which ultimately underlies all educational policy. What is the mind of a child inherently good at? What is it bad at? Without answers to such fundamental questions we will be groping at random or plunging headlong in wrong directions. An emerging view is that the human mind is impressively competent at problems that were recurring challenges to our evolutionary ancestors – seeing and moving, speaking and listening, reading emotions and intentions, making friends and influencing people. It is not so good at problems that are far simpler (as gauged by what we can program a computer to do, for example) but which are posed only by a modern way of life: reading and writing, doing mathematical calcu