EFTA02725574.pdf

GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINATION CULTURE 1 MICHAEL FASSBENDER - BEST ACTOR "THE MOST PROVOCATIVE `Elites that AND COMPELLING FILM are open OF THE YEAR" and based "ONCE SEEN, NEVER FORGOTTEN" **** on merit can :•• D 10•VAID: C • • - be nurturing' "MESMERISING" Continued treen page13 "OUTSTANDING" Brockman (1969), taking information theory - the mathematical theory ofcommunications - as a model for regardingall human experience. A main theme has continued to inform my work over the years: new technologies r new perceptions- An incident from those years stands "SEARINGLY BRILLIANT out. During an evening at dinner. Cage reached across the table and handed AND UTTERLY UNMISSABLE" me a copy ofCybernetics by Norbert Wiener. Fast forwani two years. Around 1967,1 spent two days with Stewart Brand while he was assembling the first edition of the Whole Earth trst 70000 , 4% Catalog and we sat and read the book together, underlining as we went Montt Central to our interest was the notion of *i k . ) "feedback", the non-linear relationship of input to output. It was apparent that the ideas in cybernetic theory were far "MICHAEL FASSBENDER GIVES more important than the applications for which the mathematical A SCORCHING PERFORMANCE" descriptions were designed. Stewart and I have been in touch regularly since then - a 45-year connection. .IN Was it difficult to come up with Edge's 2010 quorion, about the interne? 18 Every August. I begin a conversation with three of the original members ofEdge - Stewart, Kevin Kelly and George Dyson. Eventually. I came up with the idea of askinghow the Internet is affecting the scientific work. lives, minds and reality of the contributors. A big consideration of this question is the difference between "we" and "you". When people respond to "we" questions, their words tend to resemble expert papers public pronouncements or talks delivered from a stage. "You" leads us to share specifics ofour lived experience. The challenge then is not to let responses slip into life's more banal details. IN I was struck by something that one respondent. Esgeny Morozov, said about his fear ofa chasm opening minded pursuits based on evidence INsv of his aphorisms in particular - "between the disengaged masses and and empiricism, they are also public "The medium is the message" and "We the overengaged elites". The elites, communicators, reaching out to shape our tools and later they shape he goes on, "continue thriving in the the public by means of their books, us" - seem particularly apposite. The new environment, exploiting superb lectures, etc. They live by their wits, first captured the thought that what's online tools for scientific research and doing so in the changing times important about a medium is not the and collaboration" etc. Actually, it's of the digital age is a challenge. Their content of the messages it carries but clear that many - most? - of your concerns are very different than, say, what the medium isdoing to those who respondents are, par excellence. the casual user, who has signed up use it. That seemed to me to emerge members of those elites. That's not for a social network and by default from lots of the responses (and not just a criticism, but it might mean that becomes the product whose private Nick Carr's, either). And the meme a casual reader could come away information is sold to advertisers. about our tools shapingus surfaced from the book thinking that public again and again in the essays. engagement with the intemet and its Min a way, the shadow of Marshall significance is rather more elevated McLuhan looms over the conversation. 18 McLuhan is certainly central to and intelligent than is actually the case. 18 The problem with a discussion INSIDE TRACK Edge members share their opinions about that uses the word "elites" is that the word is automatically perceived as a pejorative. But that's not how I feel MARTIN REES museum vault with other visitors was about it at all. Elites area problem if Ex-president of the Royal Society, something that I knewInprinciple, but they're closed and exclusive. Elites professor of cosmology and astrophysics, could not directly perceive. that are open, inclusive and based on University of Cambridge WhenIgo online today. all those merit can be nurturing. Also, members rooms and hallways are teeming. What MICHAEL FASSBENDE R *Achim give one another permission to The tternet enables far wider participation strikes me is thehuman texture of the be great. One example is the Beat poets. In ront-line science it levels the paying information.I've come to appreciate the Another example is the mix ofpeople field between researchersin major centres way the event and thecrewed in fact live who created Silicon Valley. and those inrelative isolation, hitherto In symbiosis, each dependent on the While Edge is a read-only site, the handicapped by Inefficient communication. other — the people all talking at once S H A cast of characters contributing to the various projects is ever-changing and inclusion is by recommendation of members of the community. That said, Edge is not for everybody. It helps It has transformed the way science is communicated and debated. More fundamentally. it changes how researchis done, what might be discovered and how students learn. about the event, but the event only fully comprehensible as the sum tot al of the human reaction to it. The cacophony might make sense, and it might not. to know some stuff, But one thing HELEN FISHER you won't find in the responses is JON KLEINBERG Researchprofessor,Department arrogance. The site stands or falls on Professor of Computer Science. Comel of Anthropology.Rutgers University IN CINEMAS FRIDAY the quality of the questions it asks. In terms of this particular question - "Is the Internet changing the way University WhenI first used an Internet seachengine The tternet is a return to yesto year, it simply Senses me(and the rest of us)to fl you think?" - there's the question of n the early 1990s.I imagined myself bank and behave in ways for which we were people having skin in the game. The dipping into a vast. universal library. a built lorig.long ago. Take love. We that it's contributors to Edge are what I call museum vault filled withaccumulated naturaitocout a totaly unknownperson third-culture thinkers or intellectuals. knowledge. The tact that I shared this ina bar or club. But it's far more natural to Not only arc they focused on science- 14 THE NEW REVIEW Ot01.12 The Observer EFTA_R1_02213092 EFTA02725574