scribbler moon

Margaret Atwood

David Mitchell

Elif Shafak

Han Kang

Karl Ove Knausgaard

Ocean Vuong

 

Each of these authors has taken a walk through Nordmarka Forest in Norway to place a their manuscript in a special room in the Deichman Library.  Ninety four more will follow.  The authors are specially chosen for their imagination and the stories are to based on the themes of imagination and time.  No one other than the authors will see their words until 2114.   In that year someone who doesn't exist now will take each of the 100 manuscripts from their containers and prepare them for printing on paper made from 1,000 one hundred year old Norwegian spruces that were planted just before the Margret Atwood took the first walk through the forest. 

 

The Future Library project was created to stir the imagination and give hope.  A century is a good time period - just outside an average human lifespan, but not so long as to be unimaginable. What will be around? Will people care?  

Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors - Jonas Salk

 

We live with a number of legacies - a written language, medicine, science, religion, weapons, slavery, pollution. ... some good and some bad. Mostly we live in the present and don't think much about the leverage we have in creating future legacies. Some legacies happen by default.  Humans are one of the few species with a sense of the future.  Projects like the Future Library spark wonder and perhaps give us hope that maybe we can make a difference.  Perhaps a trick is to think about time scales and what we might accomplish.

 

You can do something for yourself on a smaller scale. Here's one of mine:   My thesis advisor gave me his favorite slide rule when I received my Ph.D. It had been given to him by his advisor when he received his.  It became my favorite.  I used it regularly and wondered about the legacy of calculations that were used to build conjectures and hypothesis through their careers.  Every now and again I wondered what I'd do with it.  About twenty years ago a very unusual Summer student came along.  Art and computer science, she ended up at an animation company.  In slide rule had been used for a certain type of story telling..  small corners of the fundamentals of Nature.  I gave it to her some time ago so I could enjoy the link between the past and the future.  One type of story telling changing into another.  She says it's very special to her and gets use for calculations used in making films that tell stories.  Wondering who she gives it to and what path and stories it might inspire gives me pleasure and hope.

 

In my work I have to think of a variety of time scales.  Some events at the subatomic level take place in a under a billionth of a billionth of a second.  At the scale of the Universe some things have been around for billions of years and will be around much much longer.  These times so foreign as to be abstract.  A few weeks ago one of you sent a note from the Grand Canyon that was filled with wonder inspired by that slow geological process that created it.  Wonderful experiences to stir the imagination.  We should seek out these experiences, but I find staying in human time scales and thinking about and building legacies lets me live in a slightly better future and gives me hope.    Set your mind some distance in the future and think of something good you'd like to see there or something bad you'd like to change.  With a target maybe you can imagine a path and help work towards it.  It gives us a way to not discount future people and their world.

 

Scribbler Moon?  That's the title of Margaret Atwood's book you won't read, but maybe your great great grandkid will..

 

Comments

[Jheri]

I like so many of your posts Steve, but this is my favorite. It kept me up most of last night thinking.