Initiator of the "Third Culture"

Mastermind who coined the term: John Brockman
Photo: Robert Schlesinger

On his homepage, US networker John Brockman lets the brightest minds of today think about the world of tomorrow.

Brockman runs side by side the site edge.org, and that is something like a wormhole into the future. Brockman acts there as curator of the future, as a correspondent of the morning. The man, who imagines himself in a think-tank with Goethe and Alan Turing, is modest enough, despite all certainty, not to report on what is coming. He prefers to ask questions, one each year, and he lets the brightest spirits in the world answer. . . .

In 1973 he founded his agency and mediated his friends as authors to publishers. The friends became stars, Brockman an impresario. Legendary are his annual meetings on his farm in Connecticut. On a weekend, the IQ elite comes to him and provides answers to these questions: What is the human? What is the brain? What is the free will? What is intelligence? Questions are the most important thing, says Brockman, they form the pillars of his thought-building, his empire. Questions are inherently transcendent, they want answers, they want future. And that is exactly what Brockmann is all about. . .

[Continue to English translation [4] | Continue to original German [5]]