New Ideas

Starting the new year, John Brockman asks a bunch of people to predict “what game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see.”

Oddly, many of the responses aren’t actually scientific ideas.

Nonetheless, there are lots of interesting speculations here. Some I especially enjoyed:

• Kevin Kelley: a new kind of mind
• George Dyson: interstellar viruses
• Stephon Alexander: on basketball and science camps
• Marti Hearst: the decline of text (resoundingly wrong, but interesting)
• David Gelertner: tracks and clusters replace schools (though argued by assuming their success)
• Brian Eno: the feeling that things are inevitably going to get worse (and this, you say, is new? Oy gevalt!)
• Dan Hillis: a forebrain for the world mind

Via Kevin Kelly.