The swan song for the two-decades-long Annual Question feature of Brockman's www.edge.org website. Not having another question for all ~300 of the highly intelligent contributors to try to answer, he asked them to supply their own questions but to refrain from offering answers or discussions. The result is a book with very few words per page -- an unusual kind of profundity or just a case of intellectual performance art?

Just the questions. No discussion, no tentative answers. Just a question and then the name and identity of the person asking it. Is this a joke? ( )

On Twitter, long threads develop over a question asked by one person. The responses come from a large variety of people, usually with no expertise in the subject matter. In The Last Unknowns, John Brockman asked a gaggle of mostly distinguished academics to come up with a question that had no answer. The result is one short question per page, with the questioner’s name and credentials at the top. Often, the credentials are longer than the question. It’s twitter for the accomplished.

Some work to game the system, just like on a twitter thread. Their questions are carefully crafted to be impossible or at least impossibly clever:
David Chalmers, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, asks: How can we design a machine that can correctly answer every question, including this one? (Ha ha ha)
Tyler Cowen, economic guru, asks: How far are we from wishing to return to the technologies of 1900?
Rolf Dobelli of Zurich Minds asks: Does this question exist in a parallel universe?

So academics can be fun people too. Here are some good ones:
Alun Anderson: Are people who cheat vital to driving progress in human societies?
Lisa Feldman Barrett: How does a single brain architecture create many kinds of human minds?
Andrew Barron: What would a diagram that gave a complete understanding of imagination need to be?

They can also be incomprehensible:
Amanda Gefter: Is intersubjectivity possible in a quantum mechanical universe?

And there the oldies but goldies, like: Why? and: I=we? For all their erudition, not very original I’m afraid.

The majority of the questions are in two areas: the human mind, and the cosmos. There is only one question about surviving climate change, if that says anything about the concerns of the intelligentsia. Besides academics, there are a few artists and entertainers.

I’m not sure of what use all this is. It seems to be a collection of questions to end conversations with.

David Wineberg ( )