Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?

Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Chris Anderson, Nassim Taleb and 150 more intellectual rock stars reveal how the internet is changing our minds, culture and future

If you’re paying attention, you’ve noticed the one big question everyone is asking: How is the internet changing the way we think? The Web impacts everything from the way we communicate and read, watch TV and buy everything, to the way we love, make friends, find information, organize politically, etc. Thankfully, John Brockman’s cast of geniuses is here to put all in perspective:

• STEVEN PINKER (author of The Language Instinct) on how the mind adapts to new technologies.
• RICHARD DAWKINS (author of The God Delusion) on the massive profusion of knowledge available on the internet.
• SAM HARRIS (The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation) on wired brains.
• NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB (author of The Black Swan) on the degradation of precise knowledge.
• CHRIS ANDERSON (editor of Wired magazine; author of The Long Tail) compares the internet to the discovery of fire.
• LISA RANDALL (author of Warped Passages) on the challenge of too much (unreliable) information.
• BRIAN ENO (music producer) on the battle between the “authentic” and the reproducible.

Other contributors include: FREEMAN DYSON (Physicist, Princeton Univ. ); J. CRAIG VENTER (decoder of DNA); FRANK WILCZEK (Nobel Prize-winning physicist); NICHOLAS CARR (author of The Shallows); MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI (author of Flow); TOM MCCARTHY (author or Remainder); actor ALAN ALDA; DANIEL C. DENNETT; VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN; TIM O’REILLY; MARTIN REES (president of The Royal Society); and dozens more. . .