The Speculist Essentials

By | February 14, 2010
2 Comments

Here’s our list of essentials to date:

1. Movie or TV show
Field of Dreams | Johnny Quest | Star Trek (all editions) | Blade Runner | 2001: A Space Odyssey | Gattaca | Wall-E | Battlestar Galactica (re-do) | Being John Malkovich | Dr. Zhivago

2. Fiction book
Permutation City | Blood Music | The Golden Age trilogy | Rainbow’s End | A Wrinkle in Time | Burning Chrome collection | Brave New World | Great Sky River | Earth

3. Nonfiction book
It’s Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 years | The Age of Spiritual Machines | The Singularity Is Near | Radical Evolution | Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny | Evolution: The Triumph Of An Idea | Plough, Sword, and Book | Supercrunchers | The Meaning of the 21st Century

4. Website
The Speculist | edge.org | Evo Devo Universe | Instapundit | Google.com | newscientist.com | Wolfram Alpha | Wikipedia | Stratfor.com

5. Event
2003 Foresight Vision Weekend | Founding of the Foresight Institute | Witnessing the in-progress CGI work on the Genesis Planet sequence for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the first fully CGI sequence in film history | Accelerating Change 2005 | The World Transformed on FastForward Radio | The Scientific Revolution | Burning Man (back in the day) | The Internet | H+ Summit 2009

6. Person
John Smart | Buckminster Fuller | Aubrey de Grey | Bill Gates | K. Eric Drexler | Karl Popper | Craig Venter | Joseph Campbell | Ray Kurzweil

Thanks to the futurists who have contributed to our list:
Phil Bowermaster | Stephen Gordon | Alex Lightman | Jef Allbright | P. J. Manney | Wayne Radinsky | Sally Morem | David Meskill | Belle Black | Josie Valderrama |

  • POUNCER

    A new category: Children’s Books

    Presuming reading will remain a useful life skill regardless of changes in the media, the one media best shared between a toddler and tutor is the big, colorful, poetic, “picture story” book. Sit in my lap. I’ll hold the covers, you turn the pages. Watch my finger as I point out bits of interest. Learn how to decipher the signals…

    Good Night, Moon.
    Is Your Mama A Llama?
    Guess How Much I Love You.
    If You Give a Mouse a Cookie…
    Go, Dog, GO!
    The Cat in the Hat.
    Mike Mulligan and his Steve Shovel.
    The Little Engine that Could.
    The Poky Little Puppy.
    Make Way for Ducklings.
    Runaway Bunny.
    The Puppy who Wanted A Boy.
    Horton Hatches the Egg.
    Stone Soup.

    …
    If everything worth reading fits on a five foot shelf, what else would fit on that shelf in the nursery?

  • POUNCER

    Speaking of the presumption that reading will persist …
    My daughters took to reading early and easily, while my son, for some reason, resisted. However, during a TV cartoon session:

    Zoltar had kidnapped Jan and Jase, and left Space Ghost a ransom note. Space Ghost picked up the note, and the picture showed us all the handwritten text while the superhero recited, aloud…

    My kid announced, in amazement: “Space Ghost can READ!?!”

    Me: “Well,yeah kid. It’s the first superpower. You need that one to get all the others. Even in space. Even in the future.”

    “oh.”

    That pretty much settled the argument.