How is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The net's impact on our minds and future

Description

The Internet, in the memorable words of EDGE founder John Brockman, is 'the infinite oscillation of our collective consciousness interacting with itself. It's not about computers. It's not about what it means to be human - in fact, it challenges, renders trite, our cherished assumptions on that score. It is about thinking'. In How is the Internet Changing the Way you Think?, the latest volume in Brockman's cutting-edge Edge questions series, 154 of the world's leading intellectuals - scientists, artists and creative thinkers - explore exactly what it means to think in the new age of the Internet: from Nicholas Carr's reflections on what the Internet is doing to our brains, to Richard Dawkins's sanguine assessment of its long-term potential for good; and from Clay Shirky's assessment of the impact of the Internet on the dissemination and sharing of knowledge, to Ian and Joel Gold's observations on the seismic social changes it has brought about. Editor John Brockman has assembled a world-class array of contributors, which includes (in addition to those mentioned above) Daniel C. Dennett, Martin Rees, Steven Pinker, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Sean Carroll, Brian Eno, Douglas Coupland, Matt Ridley, and scores of others at the epicentre of research in their respective disciplines.

John Brockman is a literary agent and author and the founder of the EDGE, an organization of science and technology intellectuals created in 1988 and whose motto is: 'To arrive at the edge 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.' He is the author of By the Late John Brockman and The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution, and is the editor of a score of books in the The EDGE Annual Question Books series.

Peppered with insights -- Andrew Pettie * Daily Telegraph * Regularly illuminating... Diverse enough to inform you about how to think about [the internet] and, more importantly, how to defend it. -- Pat Kane * Independent * A genuinely thought-provoking collection of writing on a subject the future of which is only very tentatively beginning to be spied through the fog. -- Doug Johnstone * Independent on Sunday *