One of the organizations that I belong to is The Long Now Foundation, which is an eclectic group of thinkers focusing on, not surprisingly, the very long term. They have fascinating talks regularly (always on a Friday in San Francisco when I am just landing in Iowa from my week in San Jose, argh), and this month they featured a talk by Alex Wright on 'Mastering Information through the ages'. The podcast hasnt been posted at LongNow yet, but one of the excerpts from his talk was in regard to a Belgian gentleman by the name of Paul Otlet, who lived from 1868-1944. The YouTube video below is an illustration of some of his prognostications from around 1930. This reminds me of the first time I saw the work of Piet Mondrian....I enjoyed it immensely until I realized that he had painted it when my Norwegian forebears were still sleeping in trees in Northern Minnesota to avoid the wolves, at which point I enjoyed it even more.
I love this kind of foresight.
That video is amazing, almost to the point of mind-boggling.
Posted by: Jeff | August 29, 2007 at 11:06 AM