What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see? The Internet, television, antibiotics, automobiles, electricity, nuclear power, space travel, and cloning—these inventions were born out of dreams, persistence, and imagination.

What game-changing ideas can we expect to see in OUR lifetimes?

As each year winds to a close, John Brockman, a literary agent representing some of the finest minds in science and technology and the founder of Edge Foundation, poses a provocative question to an international community of physicists, psychologists, futurists, thought leaders, and dreamers. Brockman is a master convener, both online and in real life. This year’s annual Edge question, What will change everything?, generated responses from Freeman Dyson, Danny Hillis, Martin Seligman, Craig Venter, and Juan Enriquez, to name a few. Here are a few highlights.

Venter imagines creating life from synthetic materials and expects that our view of life, itself, will be transformed.

Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek believes everything will continue to become smaller, faster, cooler, and cheaper—with implications of an Internet on steroids and exciting new designer materials.

Several neuroscientists wrote about everything from direct communication of feelings and thoughts from brain to brain to electrical brain stimulation for the treatment of mood disorders to cheap cryonic suspension of brains to ways to control brain plasticity.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Verena Huber-Dyson see science evolving beyond analytical focus and including a sense of synthesis. Huber-Dyson envisions the end of fragmentation of knowledge.

George Dyson, science historian, author, kayak-designer, and builder, looks toward the stars, or here on Earth, suggesting, “the detection of extraterrestrial life, extraterrestrial intelligence or extraterrestrial technology will change everything.”

Discover magazine editor in chief, Corey S. Powell, offers a list of possibilities from synthetic telepathy to genetically engineered kids.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.”

Tap your greatness as we welcome 2009!

Enjoy reading responses to the Edge annual question here, and please comment on the question yourself: What will change everything? What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?

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Distraction is getting a bad name.

This past month, I’ve been heads down on a few projects and noticing something I’d not been very conscious of before now. When I get “stuck” or when I reach a natural break point on a piece of work, the menu of potential distracters includes everything from email and telephone calls to getting food, socializing and more.

I did an informal audit. Sometimes I would check email. Other times, I would pace, get a glass of iced-tea, or walk outside for a few minutes. When I did the latter—any activity that was quiet, reflective and receptive, I would feel refreshed. I was open to receiving an insight and to being in the moment. When I returned to the project that had momentarily stumped me, I would enjoy new energy. I started calling this receptive distraction. Receptive distraction is any sort of distraction that creates mental space.

When I went to email, however, I would “spin out.” That is, I would completely lose track of what I had been working on and get immersed in all sorts of other issues. I started calling this deceptive distraction. I thought I could take a short break and crank out a few emails, but it took longer to do the emails than I thought, and longer to get back into my project afterwards.

I asked friends about their experiences with receptive distraction.

Don, a retired judge, related that he had always had a shower available in his chambers. On one occasion, during a 20-minute recess at a custody case, Don took a five-minute shower. “I let the water roll over me and let my mind go. Things that were subtle, that I’d heard but that had not sunk in—body language and other impressions—drifted through my mind, and surfaced. When I got out of the shower, I had a decision.”

Receptive distraction. “It’s like a palate cleanser,” commented Walt, a journalist.

Are your distracters receptive or deceptive?

This article also appears in the Huffington Post

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…is coming soon.

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