John Brockman (literary agent)

For other people of the same name, see John Brockman.

Brockman at Digital Life Design (DLD) 2009

John Brockman (born 1941 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a literary agent and author specializing in scientific literature. He founded the Edge Foundation, an organization aimed to bring together people working at the edge of a broad range of scientific and technical fields. Referencing C.P. Snow's "two cultures", he introduced the "third culture" consisting of "those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are."

Quotes

• "Traditional American intellectuals are, in a sense, increasingly reactionary, and quite often proudly (and perversely) ignorant of many of the truly significant intellectual accomplishments of our time." [1]
• "Throughout history, only a small number of people have done the serious thinking for everybody." [2]

Bibliography

• (1969) By the Late John Brockman
• (1988) Doing Science: The Reality Club
• (1995) The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution ISBN 0-684-82344-6
• (1996) Digerati: Encounters with the Cyber Elite
• (1996) How Things Are: A Science Tool-Kit for the Mind (edited by John Brockman and Katinka Matson), Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0-688-14951-2
• (2002) The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century ISBN 0-375-71342-5
• (2003) The New Humanists: Science at the Edge ISBN 0-7607-4529-3
• (2004) Curious minds : how a child becomes a scientist (edited by John Brockman), New York : Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-375-42291-9
• (2006) What We Believe but Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty ISBN 0-06-084181-8
• (2006) Intelligent Thought: Science Versus the Intelligent Design Movement ISBN 0-307-27722-4
• (2007) What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable ISBN 0-06-121495-7
• (2007) What Are You Optimistic About?: Today's Leading Thinkers on Why Things Are Good and Getting Better ISBN 0-06-143693-3
• (2009) This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future (with Patrick Bateson, Oliver Morton (science writer), Stephen Schneider, Stewart Brand, Brian Eno, K. Eric Drexler, among others) ISBN 978-0-06-189967-6
• (2011) Culture: Leading Scientists Explore Societies, Art, Power, and Technology (Editor) ISBN 978-0062023131

External links

• John Brockman
• Brockman's taste for Science or how to entertain the smartest people
• Guardian Interview
• John Brockman at HuffPo
• "So What Happens After Happenings?", New York Times, 4 September 1966
• John Brockman: 40 years of "intermedia kinetic environments"