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John Brockman (literary agent)

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John Brockman
John Brockman in 2009
Born (1941-02-16) February 16, 1941 (age 83)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupationliterary agent

John Brockman (born February 16, 1941) is an American literary agent and author specializing in scientific literature. He established the Edge Foundation, an organization that brings together leading edge thinkers across a broad range of scientific and technical fields.

Early life

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Brockman was born to immigrants of Polish-Jewish descent in a poor Irish Catholic enclave of Boston, Massachusetts.[1] Expanding on C. P. Snow's "two cultures", he introduced the "third culture"[2] consisting of "those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are."

Career

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While working as a banker at the time, Brockman had a chance encounter in Central Park where he met avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas. This meeting marked the beginning of Brockman's involvement in the arts, leading him to manage performances and film programs.

Brockman had a notable connection to Andy Warhol during the 1960s. Brockman was part of the New York art scene, where he engaged with various avant-garde and underground cinema activities. During this period, Brockman was known as a "Warhol groupie" and was part of the circle that Warhol frequented, which included other artists and musicians like Bob Dylan.

Brockman's involvement in the art scene included managing the Film-Makers' Cinematheque, a hub for underground cinema, where he worked with various artists, including Warhol. This connection is further evidenced by photographs of Brockman with Warhol, which he often shares with profile writers. His immersion in the arts eventually led him to bridge the gap between the arts and sciences, becoming a key figure in promoting scientific and intellectual discourse.

The Harvard-MIT Art/Science Meeting was an innovative event that brought together artists and scientists for a collaborative seminar. It was initiated by Brockman after receiving a call from Arthur K. Solomon, a biophysics professor at Harvard Medical School, and Walter A. Rosenblith, a communications biophysics professor at MIT. Both were close associates of Norbert Wiener, a pioneer in cybernetics, who had recently passed away. They were inspired by articles in The New Yorker and The Nation about the expanded cinema festival, which highlighted the intersection of art and Wiener's work on cybernetics. Solomon asked Brockman to organize a group of avant-garde artists to meet with scientists from Harvard and MIT for a two-day seminar in Cambridge. Notable scientists included Anthony Oettinger, an AI pioneer from Harvard, and Doc Edgerton from MIT, known for inventing ultra-high-speed photography. The artists included Ken Dewey and Terry Riley from Theatre X, as well as Gerd Stern and Michael Callahan from USCO.

He led a scientific salon for 20 years, asking an annual question to a host of renowned scientists and publishing their answers in book form,[3] which he decided to symbolically close down in 2018.[4]

He is an editor of Edge.org.[5][6]

Association with Jeffrey Epstein

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In an interview with Prince Andrew dated November 17, 2019, BBC reporter Emily Maitlis mentioned that both Andrew and John Brockman attended an intimate dinner at child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion to celebrate Epstein’s release from prison for charges which stemmed from at least one decade of child sex trafficking.[7]

Andrew’s presence at Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan mansion was corroborated by Brockman himself, in emails published in an October 2019 New Republic report. The story suggested that Brockman was the “intellectual enabler” of Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who died in August 2019 while again awaiting trial on charges related to sex trafficking.[8]

Brockman's famous literary dinners—held during the TED Conference—were, for a number of years after Epstein’s conviction, almost entirely funded by Epstein as documented in his annual tax filings.[9] This allowed Epstein to mingle with scientists, startup icons and tech billionaires.[10][11]

Quotes

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  • "Traditional American intellectuals are, in a sense, increasingly reactionary, and quite often proudly (and perversely) ignorant of many of the truly significant intellectual accomplishments of our time."[12]
  • "Throughout history, only a small number of people have done the serious thinking for everybody."[12]

Bibliography

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References

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  1. ^ Dazed (2012-07-08). "John Brockman". Dazed. Retrieved 2020-02-26.
  2. ^ John, Warren St (1999-09-01). "Agent Provocateur". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  3. ^ Marcus, Gary (2013-01-15). "What We Should Fear". ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  4. ^ The Last John Brockman Edge Question, Wired article.
  5. ^ Popova, Maria (2011-09-14). "15 Years of Cutting-Edge Thinking on Understanding the Mind". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  6. ^ Naughton, John (2012-01-08). "John Brockman: the man who runs the world's smartest website". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  7. ^ Maitlis, Emily (Nov 17, 2019). "Prince Andrew Newsnight interview". Retrieved Jan 3, 2022 – via The BBC.
  8. ^ Morozov, Evgeny (Aug 22, 2019). "Jeffrey Epstein's Intellectual Enabler". The New Republic. Retrieved Oct 13, 2019.
  9. ^ Aldhous, Peter (Sep 26, 2019). "How Jeffrey Epstein Bought His Way Into An Exclusive Intellectual Boys Club". Retrieved Jan 3, 2022 – via Buzzfeed.
  10. ^ Morozov, Evgeny (Sep 7, 2019). "The Epstein scandal at MIT shows the moral bankruptcy of techno-elites". The Guardian. Retrieved Oct 13, 2019 – via www.theguardian.com.
  11. ^ "How Jeffrey Epstein Bankrolled An Exclusive Intellectual Boys Club And Reaped The Benefits". BuzzFeed News. 26 September 2019. Retrieved 2019-11-18.
  12. ^ a b "Introduction | Edge.org". www.edge.org. Retrieved Oct 14, 2019.

Further reading

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  • Cultural Studies versus the "Third Culture". Slavoj Žižek. The South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol 101, No 1, pages 19–32 (2002). (article)
  • Counterculture, Cyberculture, and the Third Culture: Reinventing Civilization, Then and Now. Lee Worden. West of Eden: Communes and Utopia in Northern California, Iain Boal, Janferie Stone, Michael Watts, Cal Winslow (eds.), pages 199–221. (Oakland, 2012).
  • The "Third Culture Intellectuals" and Charles Darwin. Pascal Fischer. Anglistentag Konstanz 2013: Proceedings (XXXV), pages 71-80 (2014). (article) Archived 2018-10-08 at the Wayback Machine
  • Neurohistory Is Bunk?: The Not-So-Deep History of the Postclassical Mind. Max Stadler. Isis, Vol 105, No 1, pages 133-144 (2014). (article)
  • Network Celebrity: Entrepreneurship and the New Public Intellectuals. Fred Turner. Christine Larson. Public Culture, Vol 27, No 1, pages 53-84 (2015) (article)
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