For the last twenty years, literary agent John Brockman has presented the members of his online salon Edge with a question that elicits discussion about some of the biggest intellectual and scientific issues of our time.(Previous prompts include “What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?” or “What should we be worried about?”).
The essay responses — in excess of a hundred each year — offer a wealth of insight into the direction of today’s cultural forces, scientific innovations, and global trends.
Brockman’s interest in asking questions traces back to the late 01960s and the work of his friend, the late conceptual artist/philosopher James Lee Byars. In 01968, Byars launched a one-hour Belgian television program called the “World Question Center.” He explained the thinking behind the program as follows:
“To arrive at an axiology of the world’s knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.”
This year’s question will be Edge’s last. And this time, Brockman’s doing something a little different.
“After twenty years, I’ve run out of questions,” Brockman writes. “So, for the finale to a noteworthy Edge project, can you ask ‘The Last Question’? Your last question, the question for which you’ll be remembered.”
That’s right: instead of answering Brockman’s annual question, Edge Salon contributors are providing their own questions as answers.
This year’s extensive collection of “answers” includes contributions by several Long Now Board members, fellows, and past and future speakers from our Seminars About Long-Term Thinking speaker series:
What is the Last Question?
Chris Anderson,¹ author, entrepreneur and Emeritus Member of the Long Now Board of Directors, asks:
How can we put rational prices on human lives without becoming inhuman?
Complexity scientist Samuel Arbesman² asks:
How do we best build a civilization that is galvanized by long-term thinking?
Writer and cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson³ asks:
Will the process of discovery be completed in any of the natural sciences?
Stewart Brand,⁴ co-founder and President of Long Now and Revive & Restore, asks:
Can wild animals that are large and dangerous be made averse to threatening humans?
Brian Christian,⁵ co-author of Algorithms To Live By, asks:
Is the unipolar future of a “singleton” the inevitable destiny of intelligent life?
The geneticist George Church, who is working with Revive & Restore on reviving extinct species, asks:
What will we do as an encore once we manage to develop technological solutions to infection, aging, poverty, asteroids, and heat death of the universe?
Jared Diamond,⁶ author of Guns, Germs and Steel, asks:
Why is there such widespread public opposition to science and scientific reasoning in the United States, the world leader in every major branch of science?
Physicist Freeman Dyson⁷ asks:
Is it ultimately possible for life to bend the shape of the universe to fit life’s purposes, as we are now bending the shape of our environment here on earth?
Science historian George Dyson⁸ asks:
Why are there no trees in the ocean?
Neuroscientist and Long Now Board Member David Eagleman⁹ asks:
Can we create new senses for humans — not just touch, taste, vision, hearing, smell, but totally novel qualia for which we don’t yet have words?
Musician and Long Now Co-Founder Brian Eno¹⁰ asks:
Have we left the Age of Reason, never to return?
Academic, businessman and author Juan Enriquez¹¹ asks:
So, before The Singularity…?
Linguist Daniel L. Everett¹² asks:
Will humans ever embrace their own diversity?
Neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris¹³ asks:
Is the actual all that is possible?
Inventor and Long Now Co-Founder W. Daniel Hillis¹⁴ asks:
What is the principle that causes complex adaptive systems (life, organisms, minds, societies) to spontaneously emerge from the interaction of simpler elements (chemicals, cells, neurons, individual humans)?
Futurist and Long Now Board Member Kevin Kelly¹⁵ asks:
How can the process of science be improved?
Margaret Levi,¹⁶ Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford, asks :
Are humans capable of building a moral economy?
Technology reporter John Markoff¹⁷ asks:
How will the world be changed when battery storage technology improves at the same exponential rate seen in computer chips in recent decades?
Theoretical astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan¹⁸ asks:
Are there limits to what we can know about the universe?
Futurist Tim O’Reilly¹⁹ asks:
How can AI and other digital technologies help us create global institutions that we can trust?
Religious historian Elaine Pagels²⁰ asks:
Why is religion still around in the twenty-first century?
Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker²¹ asks:
How can we empower the better angels of our nature?
Planetary scientist Carolyn Porco²² asks:
What will it take for us to be fully confident that we have found life elsewhere in the cosmos?
Royal Astronomer Martin Rees²³ asks:
Will post-humans be organic or electronic?
Futurist and Long Now Board Member paul saffo²⁴ asks:
Will we ever be able to predict earthquakes?
Businessman and Long Now Board Member Peter Schwartz²⁵ asks:
Is the universe relatively simple and comprehensible by the human brain, or is it so complex, higher dimensional and multiversal that it remains forever illusive to humans?
Science writer Michael Shermer²⁶ asks:
Would you like to live 1,000 years?
Science fiction author Bruce Sterling²⁷ asks:
Do the laws of physics change with the passage of time?
Biotechnologist and geneticist J. Craig Venter²⁸ asks:
Will the creation of a super-human class from a combination of genome editing and direct biological-machine interfaces lead to the collapse of civilization?
Theoretical physicist Geoffrey B. West²⁹ asks:
How and when will it end or will it persist indefinitely?
Science writer Carl Zimmer³⁰ asks:
How does the past give rise to the future?
These are just a few of this year’s thought-provoking answers; you can read the full collection here.