Dropping Knowledge is a non-profit organization in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. In the US, Dropping Knowledge International is a project of the Tides Center

Tides Center

Tides Center is a non-profit organization in the United States which provides fiscal sponsorship for progressive groups. Tides Center is classified a 501 tax-exempt organization by the IRS...

, a non-profit fiscal sponsor and registered 501(c)3. In Germany, Dropping Knowledge e.V. is an Eingetragener Verein

Eingetragener Verein

Eingetragener Verein is a legal status for a registered voluntary association in Germany and Austria. While any group may be called a Verein, registration as eingetragener Verein holds many legal benefits because a registered association may legally function as a corporate body rather than just...

. Both organizations aim to foster discussion of the world's social and environmental problems. Founded in the US in 2003, the organization hosted a large discussion in Berlin on September 9, 2006.

The organization was founded by German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 filmmaker Ralf Schmerberg, American filmmaker Cindy Gantz, and American activist Jackie Wallace, originally as a response to the Iraq War, but from its inception aimed to be more than a mere "anti-movement": dropping knowledge became an interactive platform for questions, concerns and initiatives from around the world, as well as a meeting place for concerned world citizens striving to turn apathy in to action.

The nine hour discussion, named The Table of Free Voices and overseen by German Foreign Minister

Foreign Minister of Germany

The Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs is the head of the Federal Foreign Office and a member of the Cabinet of Germany. The current office holder is Guido Westerwelle...

 Frank-Walter Steinmeier

Frank-Walter Steinmeier

Frank-Walter Steinmeier is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany , and currently the leader of the opposition in the Bundestag. Steinmeier was a close aide of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, serving as Chief of Staff in the German Chancellery from 1999 to 2005...

, used a large round table on the Bebelplatz

Bebelplatz

The Bebelplatz is a public square in the central Mitte district of Berlin, the capital of Germany.The square is located on the south side of the Unter den Linden boulevard, a major east-west thoroughfare in the city centre...

 in Berlin. 112 international artists, philosophers, scientists and human rights activists were invited to simultaneously answer 100 selected questions, recorded by 112 cameras and microphones. The questions had been collected on the organization's website beginning in September 2005. The questions were read out loud by moderators Hafsat Abiola

Hafsat Abiola

Hafsat Abiola is a Nigerian human rights, civil rights and democracy activist, founder of the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy , which seeks to strengthen civil society and promote democracy in Nigeria....

 and Willem Dafoe

Willem Dafoe

Willem Dafoe is an American film, stage, and voice actor, and a founding member of the experimental theatre company The Wooster Group...

. Prominent participants included Cornel West

Cornel West

Cornel Ronald West is an American philosopher, author, critic, actor, civil rights activist and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America....

, Bianca Jagger

Bianca Jagger

Bianca Jagger is a Nicaraguan-born social and human rights advocate and a former actress and model...

, Hans-Peter Dürr

Hans-Peter Dürr

Hans-Peter Dürr is a German physicist. In addition to nuclear and quantum physics, elementary particles and gravitation, epistemology, and philosophy, he has advocated responsible scientific and energy policies.-Biography:...

, John Gage

John Gage

John Burdette Gage was the 21st employee of Sun Microsystems, where he is credited with creating the phrase "the network is the computer." He served as Chief Researcher and Vice President of the Science Office for Sun, until leaving on June 9, 2008 to join Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a...

, Bill Joy

Bill Joy

William Nelson Joy , commonly known as Bill Joy, is an American computer scientist. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as chief scientist at the company until 2003...

, Harry Wu

Harry Wu

Harry Wu is an activist for human rights in the People's Republic of China. Now a resident and citizen of the United States, Wu spent 19 years in Chinese labor camps. In 1992, he founded the Laogai Research Foundation. In 1996 the Columbia Human Rights Law Review awarded Wu its second Award for...

 and Wim Wenders

Wim Wenders

Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer.-Early life:Wenders was born in Düsseldorf. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg and Düsseldorf...

.

Transcripts and videos were later released on the project's website under a copyleft

Copyleft

Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...

 license, organized in a "Living Library" developed by the Deutsche Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz in Saarbrücken

Saarbrücken

Saarbrücken is the capital of the state of Saarland in Germany. The city is situated at the heart of a metropolitan area that borders on the west on Dillingen and to the north-east on Neunkirchen, where most of the people of the Saarland live....

(German Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

).

The cost of the event was 5 million Euro

Euro

The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...

s; initial funding came from the Wallace Foundation  and The Mark and Sharon Bloome Fund, the Allianz

Allianz

SE is a global financial services company headquartered in Munich, Germany. Its core business and focus is insurance. As of 2010, it was the world's 12th-largest financial services group and 23rd-largest company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine.Its Allianz Global Investors...

 insurance company contributed 2.7 million Euro in 2005, and Volkswagen

Volkswagen

Volkswagen is a German automobile manufacturer and is the original and biggest-selling marque of the Volkswagen Group, which now also owns the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT, and Škoda marques and the truck manufacturer Scania.Volkswagen means "people's car" in German, where it is...

 also made a sizable donation.

dropping knowledge has also produced and is distributing several short films, all under the "dropping knowledge Copyleft License" which places some restrictions on commercial use: it forbids to use the content for commercial advertising.

Participants

• Yassin Adnan
• Martin Almada
  Martín Almada
  Martín Almada is a lawyer, writer and educationalist from Paraguay. A noted dissident and human rights activist, he was a prisoner of the Alfredo Stroessner regime.-Biography:...
  
  
• Udi Aloni
  Udi Aloni
  Udi Aloni is an Israeli and American filmmaker, writer and visual artist whose works focus on the interrelationships between art, theory,and action. He began his career as a painter, establishing the Bugrashov gallery in Tel Aviv, a home for contemporary art, cultural and political events...
  
  
• Ekaterina Moshaeva
• Homero Aridjis
  Homero Aridjis
  Homero Aridjis is a Mexican poet, novelist, environmental activist, journalist and diplomat known for his independence.-Family and Early Life:...
  
  
• Mohammed Arkoun
  Mohammed Arkoun
  Professor Mohammed Arkoun was considered at the time of his death to have been one of the most influential scholars in Islamic studies contributing to contemporary islamic reform...
  
  
• Anthony Arnove
  Anthony Arnove
  Anthony Arnove is a freelance literary editor, agent and activist based in Brooklyn. He is on the board of directors of Haymarket Books, and is active in the National Writers Union and the International Socialist Organization.- Early life :...
  
  
• Jwan M. Aziz
• Rodrigo Baggio
• Dedi Baron
• Mark Benecke
  Mark Benecke
  Mark Benecke is a German forensic biologist.Benecke was born in Rosenheim . After receiving a Dr. rer. medic. at Cologne University in 1997, he worked in the Chief Medical Examiner's Office in Manhattan, New York from 1997–1999. , he works internationally on forensic cases as a freelance expert...
  
  
• Ana Lucy Bengochea
• Sihem Bensedrine
  Sihem Bensedrine
  Sihem Bensedrine is a Tunisian journalist and human rights activist.-Biography:She was born in La Marsa, near Tunis and went to France to study at the university in Toulouse, where she earned a degree in philosophy....
  
  
• Roland Berger
  Roland Berger
  -References:...
  
  
• Abbas Beydoun
  Abbas Beydoun
  Abbas Beydoun is a Lebanese poet, novelist and journalist. He was born in the village of Sur near Tyre in southern Lebanon. His father was a teacher. Beydoun studied at the Lebanese University in Beirut and the Sorbonne in Paris...
  
  
• Andries Botha
• Kamal Boullata
  Kamal Boullata
  Kamal Boullata is a Palestinian artist and art historian. His works are primarily done in acrylic and abstract in style focusing on the ideas of division in Palestinian identity, separation from homeland through utilization geometric forms as well as integration of Arabic words and...
  
  
• Tania Brugera
• Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas
• Gladman Chibememe
• Robbie Conal
  Robbie Conal
  Robbie Conal is an American guerilla poster artist noted for his gnarled, grotesque depictions of U.S. political figures of note. A former hippie, he is noted for distributing his poster art throughout a city overnight using his "volunteer guerrilla postering army".Conal's parents were both union...
  
  
• Bora Cosic
• Catherine David
• Hans-Peter Dürr
  Hans-Peter Dürr
  Hans-Peter Dürr is a German physicist. In addition to nuclear and quantum physics, elementary particles and gravitation, epistemology, and philosophy, he has advocated responsible scientific and energy policies.-Biography:...
  
  
• Steve Earle
  Steve Earle
  Stephen Fain "Steve" Earle is an American singer-songwriter known for his rock and Texas Country as well as his political views. He is also a producer, author, a political activist, and an actor, and has written and directed a play....
  
  
• Rachid ElDaif
• Sabiha El-Zayat-Erbakan
• Jodie Evans
  Jodie Evans
  Jodie Evans is a political activist, author, and documentary film producer. She characterizes her activism as working for peace and justice, environmental causes and women’s rights...
  
  
• Benjamin Fahrer
• Raymond Federman
  Raymond Federman
  Raymond Federman was a French–American novelist and academic, known also for poetry, essays, translations, and criticism. He held positions at the University at Buffalo from 1973 to 1999, when he was appointed Distinguished Emeritus Professor. Federman was a writer in the experimental style, one...
  
  
• Giora Feidman
  Giora Feidman
  Giora Feidman is an Argentinian-born Israeli clarinetist who specializes in klezmer music.-Biography:Giora Feidman was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where his Bessarabian Jewish parents immigrated to escape persecution. Feidman comes from a family of klezmer musicians...
  
  
• Viviana Figueroa
• John Gage
  John Gage
  John Burdette Gage was the 21st employee of Sun Microsystems, where he is credited with creating the phrase "the network is the computer." He served as Chief Researcher and Vice President of the Science Office for Sun, until leaving on June 9, 2008 to join Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a...
  
  
• Ashok Gangadean
  Ashok Gangadean
  Ashok Gangadean is Professor of Philosophy at Haverford College, Haverford, PA and a founder-director of the Global Dialogue Institute. He has written many books exploring the concept of a global consciousness. He is Co-Convenor of the World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality....
  
  
• Susan George
  Susan George (political scientist)
  Susan George is a well-known Franco-American political and social scientist, activist and writer on global social justice, Third World poverty, underdevelopment and debt. She is a fellow and president of the board of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam...
  
  
• Eddie Glaude
  Eddie Glaude
  Eddie S. Glaude Jr., was born in Moss Point, Mississippi. He is the chair of the Center for African-American Studies and the William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African-American Studies at Princeton University. Glaude is a 1989 graduate of Morehouse College where he was the Student...
  
  
• Jonathan Granoff
  Jonathan Granoff
  Jonathan Granoff is an American lawyer. He is currently President of the Global Security Institute, and a Senior Advisor of the American Bar Association's Committee on Arms Control and National Security...
  
  
• Jesper Green
• Nadja Halilbegovich
  Nadja Halilbegovich
  Nadja Halilbegovich is an author, speaker and survivor of Bosnian War and the Siege of Sarajevo. -Childhood:Before the war, Halilbegovich sang and played guitar with Palcici, Sarajevo's internationally-known children's choir. The war broke out when she was 12. She was wounded by a bombshell during...
  
  
• Govindaswamy Hariramamurthi

• Mae-Wan Ho
  Mae-Wan Ho
  Mae-Wan Ho is a geneticist known for her critical views on genetic engineering. Ho has authored or co-authored a number of publications, including 10 books, such as The Rainbow and the Worm, the Physics of Organisms , Genetic Engineering: Dream or Nightmare? , and Living with the Fluid Genome...
  
  
• Lillian Holt
• Kigge Hvid
• Pico Iyer
  Pico Iyer
  Pico Iyer is a British-born essayist and novelist. He is the author of numerous books on travel including Video Night in Kathmandu. His shorter pieces regularly appear in Time, Harper's, NYRB and many other publications.-Life and career:...
  
  
• Bianca Jagger
  Bianca Jagger
  Bianca Jagger is a Nicaraguan-born social and human rights advocate and a former actress and model...
  
  
• Bill Joy
  Bill Joy
  William Nelson Joy , commonly known as Bill Joy, is an American computer scientist. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as chief scientist at the company until 2003...
  
  
• Dritëro Kasapi
• China Keitetsi
  China Keitetsi
  China Keitetsi is a Ugandan activist who has won international renown as a campaigner for the plight of child soldiers. The memoirs of Keitetsi, a former child-soldier herself, have been translated into French, German, Japanese, Chinese and other languages....
  
  
• Audrey Kitagawa
• Takashi Kiuchi
• Paul Knight
• Anuradha Koirala
  Anuradha Koirala
  Anuradha Koirala is a social activist and the founder and director of Maiti Nepal - a non-profit organization in Nepal dedicated to helping victims of sex trafficking....
  
  
• Song Kosal
• Michael Laitman
• Ervin Laszlo
  Ervin László
  Ervin László is a Hungarian philosopher of science, systems theorist, integral theorist, originally a classical pianist. He has published about 75 books and over 400 papers, and is editor of World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution...
  
  
• Yungchen Lhamo
  Yungchen Lhamo
  Yungchen Lhamo is a Tibetan singer-songwriter and currently living in exile in New York City. She has won an Australian Record Industry Association award for best Folk/World/Traditional album, and was then signed by Peter Gabriel's Realworld Record label.She has performed with Billy Corgan and...
  
  
• Fang Lijun
  Fang Lijun
  Fang Lijun is an artist based in Beijing.He has shown work internationally in exhibitions including The Next Ones at Alexander Ochs , Beijing, New Work, New Acquisitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Alors, la Chine? at the Pompidou Centre in Paris...
  
  
• Tegla Loroupe
  Tegla Loroupe
  Tegla Chepkite Loroupe is a long-distance track and road runner, and a global spokeswoman for peace, women's rights, and education....
  
  
• Geert Lovink
  Geert Lovink
  Geert Lovink is a Research Professor of Interactive Media at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam , a Professor of Media Theory at the European Graduate School, and an Associate Professor of New Media at the University of Amsterdam...
  
  
• Angaangaq Lyberth
  Angaangaq Lyberth
  Angaangaq is a Kalaallit Inuk who was asked by his people to be a shaman. He has been quoted on the effects of global warming in Greenland...
  
  
• Sohrab Mahdavi
• Livingstone Maluleke
• Jerry Mander
  Jerry Mander
  Jerold Irwin "Jerry" Mander is an American activist and author, best known for his 1977 book, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television...
  
  
• Neela Marikkar
  Neela Marikkar
  Neela Marikkar is the Chairperson of the Grant McCann Erickson, a leading Communications Group in Sri Lanka in partnership with Mccann Worldgroup, USA.-Biography:Neela is a daughter of the legendary Sri Lankan media personality Reggie Candappa....
  
  
• Fred Matser
• Jonathan Meese
  Jonathan Meese
  Jonathan Meese is a German painter, sculptor, performance artist and installation artist based in Berlin and Hamburg. His works include collages, drawings and writing. He also designs theater sets and wrote and starred in a play, "De Frau: Dr. Poundaddylein - Dr...
  
  
• Mayank R. Mehta
• Valentina Melnikova
• Paul D. (aka DJ Spooky) Miller
• Anuradha Mittal
• Esther Mwaura-Muiru
• Helena Norberg-Hodge
  Helena Norberg-Hodge
  Helena Norberg-Hodge is an analyst of the impact of the global economy on cultures and agriculture worldwide, a pioneer of the localisation movement, and the articulator of the core ideas of Counter-development...
  
  
• Oscar Olivera
  Oscar Olivera
  Oscar Olivera Foronda was one of the main leaders of the protesters against the water privatization in Bolivia. The result of these protests was an event known as the Cochabamba Water Wars. Now he is one the main leaders of the protests in the Bolivian gas conflict.Oscar Olivera was awarded the...
  
  
• Vesna Pesic
  Vesna Pešic
  Vesna Pešić is a Serbian politician, one of the leaders of opposition movement in Serbia....
  
  
• Mohau Pheko
• Leung Ping-Kwan
• Sydney Possuelo
  Sydney Possuelo
  Sydney Ferreira Possuelo is a Brazilian explorer, social activist and ethnographer who is considered the leading authority on Brazil's remaining isolated Indigenous Peoples....
  
  
• Eliane Potiguara
• Swami Pragyapad
• José Manuel Prieto
  Jose Manuel Prieto
  - Biography :Jose Manuel Prieto was born in Havana, Cuba in 1962. He earned his PhD in History in Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and has taught at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica, Mexico City, from 1994 to 2004. In 2004-2005 he was the Margaret and Herman Sokol Fellow at...
  
  

• Avi Primor
  Avi Primor
  Avraham "Avi“ Primor is an Israeli publicist and former diplomat. From 1987 to 1993, he served as Ambassador to the European Union, and from 1993 to 1999 as Ambassador to Germany. After leaving the diplomatic service, he was vice-president of the University of Tel Aviv until 2004...
  
  
• Wolfram Putz
• Monira Rahman
  Monira Rahman
  Monira Rahman worked as secretary/PA to Dr John Morrison OBE who consulted for the Canadian International Development Agency in Dhaka, Bangladesh prior to becoming the founder of the Acid Survivors Foundation, an organization dedicated to raising awareness and preventing acid attacks...
  
  
• Lesego Rampolokeng
  Lesego Rampolokeng
  Lesego Rampolokeng is a South African writer, playwright and performance poet.- Early life and education :Lesego Rampolokeng was born in 1965 in Orlando West, Soweto, Johannesburg. He studied law at the University of the North in South Africa. .- Works :Lesego Rampolokeng prominence happened in...
  
  
• Alvaro Restrepo
• Simon Retallack
• Stephanie Robinson
• Santiago Roncagliolo
  Santiago Roncagliolo
  Santiago Rafael Roncagliolo Lohmann , is a Peruvian writer, scriptwriter, translator and journalist.- Life :Santiago Roncagliolo spent most of his childhood in the city of Arequipa...
  
  
• Masuma Bibi Russel
• Elisabet Sahtouris
  Elisabet Sahtouris
  Elisabet Sahtouris is a Greek-American evolutionary biologist, futurist, business consultant, event organizer and UN consultant on indigenous peoples...
  
  
• Masami Saionji
• Kailash Satyarthi
  Kailash Satyarthi
  Kailash Satyarthi is a human rights activist from India who has been at the forefront of the global movement to end child slavery and exploitative child labor since 1980 when he gave up a lucrative career as an Electrical Engineer for initiating crusade against Child Servitude. His organization...
  
  
• Beverly Schwartz
• Norbert Servos
• Mahsa Shekarloo
• Sulak Sivaraksa
  Sulak Sivaraksa
  Sulak Sivaraksa [] is founder and director of the Thai NGO “Sathirakoses-Nagapradeepa Foundation”, named after two authorities on Thai culture, Sathirakoses and Nagapradeepa...
  
  
• Tavis Smiley
  Tavis Smiley
  Tavis Smiley is a talk show host, author, liberal political commentator, entrepreneur, advocate and philanthropist. Smiley was born in Gulfport, Mississippi and grew up in Kokomo, Indiana. After attending Indiana University, he worked during the late 1980s as an aide to Tom Bradley, the mayor of...
  
  
• Fernando Solanas
  Fernando Solanas
  Fernando Ezequiel 'Pino' Solanas is an Argentine film director, screenwriter and politician....
  
  
• Thenmozhi Soundararajan
• Timothy Speed
• Tamas St. Auby
• Jonathan Stack
  Jonathan Stack
  Jonathan David Stack is an American documentary filmmaker.-Biography:Born in New York City to a teacher and worker, Jonathan spent much of his childhood exploring and took an early interest to film. He had the chance to travel a lot from a young age, which inspired him to learn about other...
  
  
• Pauline Tangiora
• Michael E. Tigar
• Oliviero Toscani
  Oliviero Toscani
  Oliviero Toscani is an Italian photographer, best-known worldwide for designing controversial advertising campaigns for Italian brand Benetton, from 1982 to 2000...
  
  
• Michael P. Totten
• Galsan Tschinag
  Galsan Tschinag
  Galsan Tschinag , born Irgit Shynykbai-oglu Dshurukuwaa, is internationally known as a Mongolian writer of novels, poems, and essays in the German language, though he hails from a Tuvan background...
  
  
• Benson Venegas
• Constantin von Barloewen
• Sima Wali
• Kurt Weidemann
• Tu Weiming
• Eliot Weinberger
  Eliot Weinberger
  Eliot Weinberger is a contemporary American writer, essayist, editor, and translator. His work regularly appears in translation and has been published in some thirty languages...
  
  
• Brian J. Weller
• Wim Wenders
  Wim Wenders
  Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer.-Early life:Wenders was born in Düsseldorf. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg and Düsseldorf...
  
  
• Cornel West
  Cornel West
  Cornel Ronald West is an American philosopher, author, critic, actor, civil rights activist and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America....
  
  
• Harry Wu
  Harry Wu
  Harry Wu is an activist for human rights in the People's Republic of China. Now a resident and citizen of the United States, Wu spent 19 years in Chinese labor camps. In 1992, he founded the Laogai Research Foundation. In 1996 the Columbia Human Rights Law Review awarded Wu its second Award for...
  
  
• Shaobin Yang
• Irina Yasina
• Sanar Yurdatapan

Problema: The Film

Ralf Schmerberg released a documentary film about the Table of Voices called Problema, which is available to watch or download for free online. The film was directed and edited by Schmerberg and features not only selections from the 112 responses to the 100 questions, but also visual footage from various historical, news, documentary and artistic sources.

External links

• www.droppingknowledge.org, official web site
• Press coverage of The Table of Free Voices
• Problema The Film