Digerati who yearn to be glitterati Analysis/Commentary Literary agent John Brockman has led a rather unusual life. His father was a flower salesman, and as a boy Brockman learnt to hawk flowers. Today, using his Website at Edge.org, he hawks manuscripts for publication to editors all over the world. He describes himself as a "digerati," a member of the digital elite. But maybe he's just another successful wannabe. Being a rich wannabe isn't all that bad, especially when you can wear a Borsalino hat and custom-tailored jackets, or hang that hat in the shadow of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. Things could be worse. Brockman wants to take the old-fashioned literary elite of New York by storm. The world is full of intelligent nobodies who yearn for star status, especially academics, and Brockman plans to coax them into his stable. In the eighties, Brockman earned a small fortune converting the writings of verbally-slick programmers into shelves of "How to" computer books. When the computer book market glutted in the nineties, he turned to glamorizing what Nietzsche calls "dustpots" -- i.e., the bearded elite that hangs in the shadows of university rostrums.He became an agent for popularizers of science like Esther Dyson, Sherry Turkle, Pattie Maes, and many others. The book Emotional Intelligence received public notice through his behind-the-scenes ministrations. Brockman calls his new elite the Third Culture -- which is neither literary, nor strictly scientific. His new popularizers reflect a concern for implementation, or pragmatism. Its members are doers, not sayers. Writers like Sherry Turkle have day jobs as teachers, and participate in the councils of smart people who kick-start media consensus. A close look at the new books suggests, however, that their authors might be more tongue-tied than presumed. Turkle's writings emerge from an era when deconstruction was the rage and scientists picked at ideas like vivisectionists. Maes' essays are full of confusing anthropomorphic metaphors. In short, the new elite tends to churn its mental wheels. The problem closely parallels the problem of the age-old culturati -- the new digerati fail to embrace reality in all its scope. Stressing that intelligence grows more and more dependent on facts doesn't deny the possibility that science might often fail to identify large-scale structures. The philosopher Martin Heidegger sought to explore the meaningful abstractions of the everyday; dead now 20 years, he succeeds better than most current digital wordsmiths. Brockman had the insight to see that the publishing world needed to be brought online. He began sending manuscripts to editors by e-mail and maintaining a paperless office. Now, he yearns to launch the eBay (electronic auction house) for publishing in Silicon Alley. You've got to wonder, though -- will his clients have anything meaningful to say? May 24, 2000