That international club of provocative thinkers, The Edge, released its 2009 Question earlier this month at its World Question Centre. 150 of the sharpest pencils in the, um, pencil-case of contemporary thought were asked:

WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING?

“What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?”

Wow. I personally would hope to see a revolution in how we manage our planet’s resources so that we have clean, renewable energy. But hopefully science will also provide the evidence for us to address so many of our current woes from disease to hunger and poverty. But me-thinks that we don’t even need science to address those things, we just need a compassionate and wise civilisation…

Read what the others say eg

·      Martin Seligman on “Much Smarter People”

·      Mihalyi Csikzentmihalyi on “The end of Analytic Science” [big yahoo from me]

·      Rupert Sheldrake on “The Credit Crunch for Materialism”

·      Howard Rheingold on “Social Media Literacy”

·      John Gottman on “Laboratory Earth Colonies”

·      Douglas Rushkoff on “The Discovery of Intelligent Life from Somewhere Else”

Mix it in with the other 144 contributors writing on DNA, biospheres, the brain, the universe, climate, computers, and so much more, and you have a year’s worth of brain food.

Previous years’ questions, now available in book form, are:

2008: What have you changed your mind about?

2007: What are you optimistic about?

2006: What is your dangerous idea?

2005: What do you believe is true even though we cannot prove it?