This year the answers to the Edge.org annual Question ( 2012 : What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation? ) were long and, to someone who's developed an internet attention span, tedious.
Suggestion: Edge should direct its great thinkers(tm) to submit their answer in a web form that has a hard limit on text length.
Another advantage to using such a form would be that you could also send out a more general invitation, so that self-selectors could also offer answers; then a volunteer or staffer could pick out gems from among this pool of responses.
