Ian Morris: Why the West Rules -- For Now

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Bio

Stewart Brand

Stewart Brand is co-founder and president of The Long Now Foundation and co-founder of Global Business Network. He created and edited the Whole Earth Catalog (National Book Award), and co-founded the Hackers Conference and The WELL. His books include The Clock of the Long Now; How Buildings Learn; and The Media Lab. His most recent book, titled Whole Earth Discipline, is published by Viking in the US and Atlantic in the UK.

Ian Morris

Ian Morris is interested in understanding why the west has dominated the earth for the last few centuries. He began his career as an archaeologist and historian of ancient Greece, studying early texts and excavating sites around the Mediterranean Sea, but in recent years he has moved toward larger-scale questions and an evolutionary approach to world history. He has written or edited eleven books. The most recent, Why the West Rules -- For Now, asks how geography and natural resources have shaped the distribution of wealth and power around the world across the last 20,000 years and how they will shape our future. Morris' ongoing projects include a book on slavery and globalization, a study of western civilization co-authored with historian Niall Ferguson of Harvard University, and a volume of the forthcoming Cambridge History of the World.

Alexander Rose

As the director of the Long Now Foundation, Alexander Rose has facilitated projects such as the 10,000 Year Clock with Danny Hillis, the Rosetta Project, Long Bets, Seminars About Long Term Thinking, Long Server and others. Rose shares several design patents on the 10,000 Year Clock with Danny Hillis, the first prototype of which is in the Science Museum of London.

Hired as the first employee of the foundation in February of 1997, Rose has been an artist in residence at Silicon Graphics Inc., a project manager for Shamrock Communications, and a founding partner of Inertia Labs. Rose attended the Art Center College of Design and graduated with a bachelor of arts honors degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Industrial Design in 1995.

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3 Comments

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ReX342

Posts: 1

Posted: 09.19.11, 02:20 PM

@8&9: "Good is the enemy of better". That's what I took away from it

Sounds a little Nietzschean. But also sounds better than "Bad geography has become good geography".

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Eric25001

Posts: 81

Posted: 05.08.11, 10:42 PM

No need to fear!

Read about the Eemian 130,000 - 114,000 before present
Maybe the Holocene climatic optimum 9,000 - 5,000 Before Present
and let us not forget the Medieval warm period about 1,000 years ago!

If you think you were hoaxed or hoodwinked by CO2 fearmongers!
Forget about it! Move on. Thats right move on--

Temperatures and sea levels have been higher and have been lower.
It has happened before and it will happen again.

By the way when was the sea level and temperature perfect?
What year, what decade? what century?

Remember Ben Franklin told us that a person convinced against thier will was as if not convinced at all so==== MOVE ON

Lesson learned about Hoax and fearmongers!

Unless you attribute the Eemian, Holocene, Medieval warm period etcetera etcetera to a vast trick to test your belief and faith in Al and the AGW model of the universe!

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hmonteiro

Posts: 1

Posted: 05.04.11, 05:12 AM

Great conference. Just one correction. Alvares Cabral, who found Brazil, was not genovese, like, Columbus, but portuguese

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