As we near completion on the construction at the new Long Now space in Fort Mason, we are also building the collection of books that will reside here. We have named this collection The Manual for Civilization, and it will include the roughly 3000 books you would most want to rebuild civilization. While this may sound a little apocalyptic, we are not predicting any collapse of civilization. As it turns out, using this as an editing principle just seems to give us a very interesting collection of books.
What are these books? In order to make sure we don’t just get a bunch of books on how to make fire, we spread the collection across four basic categories to help guide the collection process:
What are these books? In order to make sure we don’t just get a bunch of books on how to make fire, we spread the collection across four basic categories to help guide the collection process:
- Cultural Canon (Great Books, Shakespeare, Plato, etc.)
- Mechanics of Civilization (Technical knowledge, how to build and understand things)
- Rigorous Science Fiction (Science fiction that tells a useful story about a potential future)
- Long-term Thinking, Futurism, and relevant history (Books on how to think about the future that may include surveys of the past)
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