What Should We Be Worried About?

PREFACE: THE EDGE QUESTION

JOHN BROCKMAN

In 1981, I founded the Reality Club, an attempt to gather together those people exploring the themes of the post–Industrial Age. In 1997, the Reality Club went online, rebranded as Edge. The ideas presented on Edge are speculative; they represent the frontiers in such areas as evolutionary biology, genetics, computer science, neurophysiology, psychology, cosmology, and physics. Emerging out of these contributions is a new natural philosophy, new ways of understanding physical systems, new ways of thinking that call into question many of our basic assumptions.

For each of the anniversary editions of Edge, I and a number of Edge stalwarts, including Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, and George Dyson, get together to plan the annual Edge Question—usually one that comes to one or another of us or our correspondents in the middle of the night. It’s not easy coming up with a question. (As the late James Lee Byars, my friend and sometime collaborator, used to say: “I can answer the question, but am I bright enough to ask it?”) We look for questions that inspire unpredictable answers—that provoke people into thinking thoughts they normally might not have.

The 2013 Edge Question:

WHAT SHOULD WE BE WORRIED ABOUT?

We worry because we are built to anticipate the future. Nothing can stop us from worrying, but science can teach us how to worry better, and when to stop worrying. The respondents to this year’s question were asked to tell us something that (for scientific reasons) worries them—particularly something that doesn’t seem to be on the popular radar yet, and why it should be. Or tell us about something they’ve stopped worrying about even if others still do, and why it should drop off the radar.