We’re going through a rapidly accelerating epistemological sea change. We’re using tools with unprecedented power, and in the process, as the scientist J.Z. Young wrote, we’re becoming those tools. What we’ve lacked is an intellectual culture able to transform its own premises as fast as our technologies are transforming us. The only place you’re going to find that is in sciences where empiricism and epistemology collide, and everything becomes different … We’re living through the most intense change in the history of the human race. It’s absurd to hide one’s head in the sand. It’s just as absurd to commodify that change as the next chic lifestyle … We need to cultivate a critical perspective toward the tools we use.
Predictor: Brockman, John
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Phil Leggiere interviews John Brockman, author of “The Third Culture,” a co-founder (with David Bunnell of PC magazine) of Content.Com, and a former backer of Andy Warhol’s underground movies. Leggiere asks, “What makes the rise of the Third Culture intellectually revolutionary?” Brockman answers: ”We’re going through a rapidly accelerating epistemological sea change. We’re using tools with unprecedented power, and in the process, as the scientist J.Z. Young wrote, we’re becoming those tools. What we’ve lacked is an intellectual culture able to transform its own premises as fast as our technologies are transforming us. The only place you’re going to find that is in sciences where empiricism and epistemology collide, and everything becomes different. That synergy exists, for example, in the work of biologists Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould; physicists Roger Penrose, Stephen Hawking, and Freeman Dyson; astronomer Sir Martin Rees; computer scientists Danny Hillis and Marvin Minsky; as well as others discussed in the book … we’re living through the most intense change in the history of the human race. It’s absurd to hide one’s head in the sand. It’s just as absurd to commodify that change as the next chic lifestyle. Serious critical thinking about new technology is what’s at a premium. Clifford Stoll’s book Silicon Snake Oil is foolishly dismissed as ‘Luddite,’ but he’s merely trying to establish balance. Jerry Mander’s ‘Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television’ taught me as much about technology in 1977 as Marshall McLuhan did in the 1960s. It didn’t convince me to smash my television set. It did enable me to see for the first time what television really is. We need to cultivate a critical perspective toward the tools we use.”
Biography:John Brockman, founder of Brockman, Inc., a software and literary agency, served as the chairman and cofounder of Content.Com, Inc., a Web-based digital publishing company. He also wrote or edited many books, including “The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution.” (Entrepreneur/Business Leader.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: General, Overarching Remarks
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Agent of the Third Culture: John Brockman is the Michael Ovitz of the New Intellectual Elite
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.08/brockman_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney