The future, as a tool, has taken a number of different shapes this century: the Streamline design movement of the '30s, the utopianism of the '50s, the sci-fi explosion of the '70s and '80s. But never has the future felt more present, more elaborately anticipated and mapped out with protoypes and prophesies, than it does right now. Here we are twisting our way out of the skin of the 20th century and hunting around for a new pattern of scales to wear into the 21st. Time, in other words, is ripe for invention: The IT revolution is demanding a whole new generation of devices and techniques, and the booming economy is making pretty much anything seem possible -- and patentable.

ON THE ONE HAND, there's a remarkable spirit of curiosity and optimism, a climate of conceptual pyrotechnics where risk is praised and conviction is rewarded. On the other hand, in the mad rush to create and own the next big thing, it's hard to distinguish invention from ornamentation. Are we too focused on short-term marketability at the expense of long-term benefit? As the old world gets stripped away, many of today's inventions are more novelty items than genuinely novel. At a moment of colossal shift, we are anxious to locate fixed, lasting identity in whatever products, tools, and heroes we can call superlative.

Which doesn't mean there aren't landmark inventions in the works. To pick them out of the clutter, to examine what makes them happen and how they can be encouraged, FEED turned to scientists, engineers, authors, investors and visionaries who all share a spirit of defiance, and who understand that invention must be far more than the repackaging of old ideas. How much does the current surplus of funding affect the quality and consequence of inventions? What happens to the art of invention when it is largely mediated by corporate cash? How can we distinguish the inventors from the showmen? What will be the ideal climate for invention in the future?

WE OPEN the Special Issue with an essay, Mark Pesce's "Thinking Small," which explores nanotechnology, arguably the next century's most mysterious and powerful breeding ground for invention. In "The Spy who Financed Me," Mark Boal explains how the CIA is turning a long history of covert inventions into a venture capital outfit. In his column, "The Interface," Steven Johnson takes a look at tomorrow's desktop, asking some of the industry's leading figures what their computer screens will look like 10 years from now. A series of vignettes entitled "Immaculate Contraptions" offers an overview of the major inventions currently underway in the areas of warfare, medicine, transportation, and personal technology. In the FEED Dialog, "Mothers of Invention," a panel of experts -- Stewart Brand, John Perry Barlow, Dr. Dennis Bushnell, Paul Moller, Ken Perlin, and Mark McKibben -- discuss the creative forces behind the past, present and future of invention. Vincent De Franco interviews Nobel Prize-winner Kary Mullis about inventing the polymerase chain reaction.

In Part Two, Steven Johnson talks to MIT Media Lab visionary Mitch Resnick about 21st century toys. In an essay on Xerox PARC, Gary Rivlin asks whether bringing viable products to market has become the primary goal of this one-time innovation hothouse. And Jim Ledbetter brings you courtside for the invention of the internet economy. The issue closes with another collection of vignettes, in which a group of leading thinkers -- designers, authors, and imagineers -- speculate about a "dream machine" of the future: one that might translate your thoughts to a screen, your mood to music, or tell your time of death. We're simply looking for great ideas whose time has come.

As always, we look forward to hearing your thoughts on invention in the LOOP.

-- Invention issue editors Amanda Griscom and Hillary Rosner.