This is a fabulous thought experiment that is a spinoff of the Long Now project -- if you were creating a library of books with which to rebuild the world, which books would you include? Which would you purposefully exclude as being counterproductive to rebuilding a civilization worth living in?
The list of contributors so far include such thinkers, futurists, and scifi writers as Brian Eno, Stewart Brand, Neal Stephenson, Violet Blue, Kevin Kelly, Megan and Rick Prelinger, Bruce Sterling, David Brin, Daniel Saurez, Maria Popova, and Mark Praline. So far (I haven't scanned all of the lists carefully), the only work of religion seems to come from Stewart Brand -- Lao Tzu’s Te-Tao Ching – A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts by Lao Tzu and translated by Robert G. Henricks. Good. I can't help but think that future civilizations would be better off without all those other "religious" books that have brought so much tragedy to past (and present) civilizations. What Books Could Be Used to Rebuild Civilization?: Lists by Brian Eno, Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly & Other Forward-Thinking Minds | | | | | | | | | | | What Books Could Be Used to Rebuild Civilization?: Lists...One particularly distressing hallmark of late modernity can be characterized as a cultural loss of the future. | | | | View on www.openculture.com | Preview by Yahoo | | | | |
