Edge World Question Center
Photograph: Katinka Matson
? 2010 ? HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?
? 2009 ? What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?
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Edge is a Conversation
"Edge is different from The Algonquin, The Apostles, The Bloomsbury Group, or The Club, but it offers the same quality of intellectual adventure. Closer resemblances are to The Invisible College and the Lunar Society of Birmingham. The early seventeenth-century Invisible College was a precursor to the Royal Society. Its members consisted of scientists such as Robert Boyle, John Wallis, and Robert Hooke. The Society's common theme was to acquire knowledge through experimental investigation. The Lunar Society of Birmingham, an informal club of the leading cultural figures of the new industrial age — James Watt, Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgewood, Joseph Priestly, and Benjamin Franklin. In a similar fashion, Edge gathers together those who are exploring the themes of the post-industrial age.
Through its Master Classes, the Edge Dinners, the World Question Center, the Edge Videos, and it's Special Events, Edge gathers together the third culture intellectuals and technology pioneers and entrepreneurs and presents their conversation as a public service through its online salon edge,org.
One of the venues where this ongoing conversation takes place is at Edge Dinners, the most recent of which took place last week, during the week of TED 2010 in Long Beach, California. Dinner guests included a number of individuals who are playing a significant role in this new age of wonder through their scientific research, enlightened philanthropy, and entrepreneurial initiative: Lawrence Brilliant, M.D., Sergey Brin, George Church, Bill Gates, W. Daniel Hillis, Dean Kamen, Kary Mullis, Nathan Myhrvold, Larry Page, Jeff Skoll, Craig Venter, and Nathan Wolfe. Written by: John Brockman"