Pop!Tech 2006: Dangerous Ideas
Stewart Brand, Co-chairman of the Board of Directors, The Long Now Foundation
Stewart Brand viewed the question of a bright green future through the lens of increasing urbanization. It's amazing to see the themes of generative systems and Kevin Kelly's "What Technology Wants" come together in a discussion of "leapfrogging" and urbanization. Left to its own devices, will increasing urbanization grow and expand like Kevin Kelly's vision of the over-urbanized Earth? Just as Phillip Longman postulated in his book The Empty Cradle, will cities in Europe continue to age and decrease in size as more and more young people flock to super cities in developing countries across Asia and the Middle East ?
And what would a super city with tens of millions look like anyway? How can we apply Brian Eno's argument of release versus control? When do we, as citizens, surrender to an emergent system and when do we galvanize for control, action and, above all else, a sense of responsibility for ourselves?
Stewart is an author, a publisher, a futurist, an activist and a visionary. In 1968, he founded (and wrote) the Whole Earth Catalog, which won the National Book Award and was published through 1985. In 1984, he founded the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), a computer teleconference system for the San Francisco Bay Area.
Stewart Brand viewed the question of a bright green future through the lens of increasing urbanization. It's amazing to see the themes of generative systems and Kevin Kelly's "What Technology Wants" come together in a discussion of "leapfrogging" and urbanization. Left to its own devices, will increasing urbanization grow and expand like Kevin Kelly's vision of the over-urbanized Earth? Just as Phillip Longman postulated in his book The Empty Cradle, will cities in Europe continue to age and decrease in size as more and more young people flock to super cities in developing countries across Asia and the Middle East ?
And what would a super city with tens of millions look like anyway? How can we apply Brian Eno's argument of release versus control? When do we, as citizens, surrender to an emergent system and when do we galvanize for control, action and, above all else, a sense of responsibility for ourselves?
Stewart is an author, a publisher, a futurist, an activist and a visionary. In 1968, he founded (and wrote) the Whole Earth Catalog, which won the National Book Award and was published through 1985. In 1984, he founded the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), a computer teleconference system for the San Francisco Bay Area.
Since 1989, Stewart has been a member of the board of trustees of the Santa Fe Institute, which studies the sciences of complexity. He has received the Golden Gadfly Lifetime Achievement Award from the Media Alliance of San Francisco, was a founding member of the board of directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and is an acting advisor to the conservation organization Ecotrust.
More recently, Stewart helped found and is president of The Long Now Foundation, a private organization that seeks to grow into an ultra-longterm cultural institution that will provide a counterpoint to today’s “faster/ cheaper†mindset by promoting “slower/better†thinking, in the framework of the next 10,000 years.
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