Brockman, born to Austrian immigrants of Jewish descent, grew up in Dorchester, which was a poor Irish Catholicenclave in Boston, Massachusetts. His father was a broker in the wholesale flower market in Boston, to hustle sales.[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." Brockman attended Babson Institute (now Babson College) and earned an MBA from the Columbia Business School in 1963.[3]
Career
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,[4] which he decided to symbolically close down in 2018.[5]
In an interview with Prince Andrew on November 17, 2019, BBC reporter Emily Maitlis mentioned that both Andrew and John Brockman attended a 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.[8] Brockman's name was also found in Epstein's private jet log.[9]
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.[10]
Brockman's 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.[11] This allowed Epstein to mingle with scientists, startup icons and tech billionaires.[12][13]
Quotes
"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."[14]
"Throughout history, only a small number of people have done the serious thinking for everybody."[14]
(2011) Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net's Impact on Our Minds and FutureISBN978-0062020444
(2012) This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your ThinkingISBN978-0062109392
(2013) This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World WorksISBN978-0062230171
(2014) What Should We Be Worried About?: The Hidden Threats Nobody Is Talking AboutISBN978-0062296238
(2015) This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories that are Blocking ProgressISBN978-0062374349
(2015) What to Think About Machines That Think: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine IntelligenceISBN978-0062425652
(2017) Know This: Today's Most Interesting and Important Scientific Ideas, Discoveries, and DevelopmentsISBN978-0062562067
(2018) This Idea is Brilliant: Lost, Overlooked, and Underappreciated Scientific Concepts Everyone Should KnowISBN978-0062698216
(2019) The Last Unknowns: Deep, Elegant, Profound, UNANANSWERED QUESTIONS About the Universe, the Mind, the Future of Civilization, and the Meaning of LifeISBN978-0062897947
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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