Long Now Foundation Seminars

Stuart Brand’s peculiar Long Now Foundation has been hosting a series of seminars on long term thinking in the San Francisco area over the last couple of years. The list of speakers is impressive and most of the talks are available for download in Ogg Vorbis or MP3 format.

Particularly good talks include Roger Kennedy’s Political History of North America from 25,000 BC to 12,000 AD (Ogg Vorbis, MP3) from which I learned for the first time of the remarkable Pyramid-like structures in Illinois. Paul Hawken also gives a great talk (Ogg Vorbis, MP3). I had the pleasure of hearing Hawken speak here in Charlottetown a few years ago where he chided us for having potatoes from California in the local supermarket (our province is famous for it’s local potato production).

The latest talk (just last week) is by Ray Kurzweil (Ogg Vorbis), who’s ideas I wrote about in the early days of this weblog.

The series is worth following and the foundation does a great service in its organization and free online distribution.