Through his organization Edge Foundation, John Brockman asks academics and artists to respond to a provocative question about science that will bring something new to a discussion.
This year he asks: What should we be worried about? One hundred and fifty contributors – many well-known, others less famous – take us on short trips to a land of anxiety, detailing fears we might never have otherwise known existed. Should we worry about the loss of humility, radio leakage, maniacal robots and the black hole of finance? Shouldn’t we also burden our worries with the worry about worry? What about known unknowns, or worse, unknown unknowns!
What I especially like about this book is not only the variety of topics but also the conflicting responses upon the same topic. Brockman doesn’t necessarily have an agenda beyond supporting discourse – free, open and intelligent conversations about where our world might be heading.