What questions are you asking yourself?

"Is a greater understanding of the way the brain works going to give
me a new language to explain what it is like to be me? Will the words
we use now one day seem as strange as the 'humours' we once used to
explain the state of our bodies? And what will be the consequence if a
scientist gains the power to know me better than I can know myself?"

ALUN ANDERSON
Editor of New Scientist, biologist and author of Science And
Technology In Japan.
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"To what extent can we achieve a more just society through the use of
better economic indicators, and to what extent is our choice of
economic indicators just a reificiation of the wishes of those who are
already economically powerful?"

JOHN BAEZ
Mathematical physicist at University of California, Riverside.
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"What if Gutenberg had invented the world wide web instead of the
movable type slug? How would the questions scientists chose to ask
themselves over the past five centuries, and the language in which
they chose to answer, have been different?"

JAMES BAILEY
Former executive at Thinking Machines; author of After Thought.
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"How can we build a new ethics of respect for life that goes beyond
individual survival to include the necessity of death, the
preservation of the environment, and our current and developing
scientific knowledge?"

MARY CATHERINE BATESON
Anthropologist, George Mason University; author Composing A Life;
Peripheral Visions.
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"How can considering the longest time scales in human endeavor lead us
to deal with the approaching crises of greenhouse warming and species
diversity?"

GREGORY BENFORD
Physicist, University of California, Irvine; author of Timescape.
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"How do we make long-term thinking automatic and common instead of
difficult and rare?"

STEWART BRAND
Founder of The Whole Earth Catalog; author of How Buildings Learn.
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"What is the mathematical essence that distinguishes living from
non-living, so that we can engineer a transcendence across the current
boundaries?"

ROD BROOKS
Computer scientist; director of MIT's AI Lab.
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"Do humans have evolved homicide modules - evolved psychological
mechanisms specifically dedicated to killing other humans under
certain contexts?"

DAVID BUSS
Psychologist at University of Texas at Austin; author of The Evolution
Of Desire.
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"How will minds expand, once we understand how the brain makes mind?"

WILLIAM H. CALVIN Theoretical neurophysiologist, University of
Washington; author of The Cerebral Code; How Brains Think.
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"Throughout its history, the scientific community has shown great
integrity in resisting the onslaught of anti-rationalism. How can it
now be persuaded to show the same integrity in regard to scientism?"

DAVID DEUTSCH
Physicist, Oxford University; author of The Fabric Of Reality.
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"Why are decentralized processes ubiquitous in nature and society and
why are they so poorly understood that people will sacrifice their
autonomy and freedom for authoritarian, centralized solutions (gods,
governments, and gurus) to personal and social problems?"

ARTHUR DE VANY
Professor, Mathematical Behavioral Sciences Dept., University Of
California, Irvine.
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"However appropriate it may be for the economy, the 'market model' is
a grossly inadequate model for the rest of human society. With the
decline of religious conviction and the slow pace of changes in the
legal code, how can we nurture persons and institutions that can
resist a purely market orientation in all spheres of living?"

HOWARD GARDNER
Psychologist at Harvard; author of Frames Of Mind; The Mind's New
Science; Extraordinary Minds.
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"How can we improve our reward system for excellence in filtering,
interpreting, and synthesizing the vast body of so-called information
with which we are deluged."

MURRAY GELL-MANN
Nobel laureate physicist at the Santa Fe Institute; author of The
Quark And The Jaguar.
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"Can science survive the sell-out to technology and the corporate
sector?"

BRIAN GOODWIN
Biologist, Schumacher College; author of How The Leopard Changed Its
Spots.
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"How do intelligent beings learn to adapt successfully on their own to
a rapidly changing world without forgetting what they already know?"

STEPHEN GROSSBERG
Cognitive scientist at Boston University; author of Studies Of Mind
And Brain; The Adaptive Brain.
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"How can we reconcile our desire for fairness and equity with the
brutal fact that people are not all alike?"

JUDITH RICH HARRIS
Developmental psychologist; co-author of The Child: A Contemporary
View Of Development.
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"How can we bring up children so that they have the ability to form
satisfying relationships and a proper moral sense? How do we construct
a society with a proper moral code? Do we know what a proper moral
code is?"

ROBERT HINDE
Ethologist; Fellow, former Master and Royal Society Professor, St.
John's College, Cambridge; author of Towards Understanding
Releationships; Individuals, Relationships, and Culture.
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"What are the implications of the science of complex adaptive systems
for the nature of law and of legal personhood?"

DAVID JOHNSON
Attorney; founder of Counsel Connect; Co-Director, Cyberspace Law
Institute.
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"How can minds, lives, and relationships be enhanced by information
systems in unforeseen ways?"

"How can scientific and technological culture be articulated so that
fewer people are driven to embrace superstitions, and so that
technology is more likely to be designed and judged on humanistic
terms?"

JARON LANIER
Computer scientist and musician; pioneer of virtual reality.
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"With the ever-growing dominance of corporate forms of control in
everyday social life, how do we reconcile our notions of personal
liberty and autonomy rooted in Enlightenment political thought?"

EDWARD O. LAUMANN
Sociologist at the University of Chicago; author of The Social
Organization Of Sexuality.
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"How best can we combine democracy and expertise to make the living
conditions of the people of earth, especially those currently in
hardship, better and more equitable?"

OLIVER MORTON
Freelance writer, and a contributing editor at Wired and Newsweek
International.
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"How much of what we as persons can experience in life can we share
with fellow human beings?"

TOR N¯RRETRANDERS
Danish science writer; author of The User Illusion (forthcoming in the
U.S.).
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"A chimpanzee cannot understand Bessel functions or the theory of
black holes. Human forebrains are a few ounces bigger than a chimp's,
and we can ask many more questions than a chimp. Are there facets of
the universe we can never know? Are there questions we can't ask?"

CLIFFORD A. PICKOVER
Computer scientist; author of The Alien Iq Test; The Loom Of God
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"Given what we know now about the origins, history, and impacts of
technology, is it possible to design, deploy, and use technologies in
ways that help humans be more human, instead of more like components
in a machine?"

HOWARD RHEINGOLD
Founder of Electric Minds, a webzine; author of Tools For Thought;
Virtual Communities.
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"How to ensure that we develop sciences and technologies that serve
the people, are open to democratic scrutiny and which assist rather
than hinder humans to live harmoniously with the rest of nature?"

STEVEN ROSE
Neurobiologist, The Open University; author Lifelines; The Making Of
Memory.