I’ve been a fan of The Long Now Foundation ever since I was introduced to it! For those who don’t know:

“The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996* to develop the Clock and Library projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and promote “slower/better” thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.”

They also host a series of seminars which are now available through podcast (yay!). Today I finally got around to listening to the Brian Eno and Will Wright seminar. What an inspirational force!! The combination of Brian Eno’s generative music (he mentions Wind Chimes as an example!!) and Will Wright’s Spore was just enlightening, amusing and extremely well…cozy, actually! At the end I started daydreaming about having them both around for dinner to discuss some more!
They’re attitude about their creations is pretty much summed up with Brian Eno’s “We make the seeds not the forest” comment. They were both really charming about their fascination of what they could learn from their fans. Eno has a great story about the re-release of “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” and how the record company came up with the unoriginal idea of adding some remixes. Apparently, David Byrne came up with the idea to instead make some content available for fans to remix themselves, which proved to be a big success! Yay! Ofcourse it would have been much better to have a visual handy when Will Wright was talking about Spore, but his words and mind are intoxicating nonetheless! Interesting to hear that he actually makes’real life’ models of his worlds! I’ve always felt really bad about knocking The Sims Online, because I truely am a Will Wright fan! But where The Sims gave the ‘player’ more creative freedom, The Sims Online did not. And I’m sure that has more to do with something he talks about here – simplistic and few rules. The Sims Online has way too many rules that just leave too little freedom for ‘fun’ – whereas The Sims, does not.
There was just so much interesting going on at this seminar – and I was busy chopping up lunch for the office while listening through it – so I couldn’t take any notes. Hearing Eno and Wright’s discussion on the verb ‘play’ was a true adrenaline booster! I only wish they could’ve gone on to discuss some more! There’s loads more worth mentioning like the creation of stories and narratives – and painting!!!
Personally I’m filled with positive adrenaline juices that have eluded me for some time now. Instead of treading myself more deeply into the dark depressive cold swamp and focusing all my energy in ALL the wrong places I’m starting to glimpse a path to dry land! Yay!!!

PS
Fredrik!!! I think you’d really enjoy John Rendon’s ‘Long-term Policy to Make the War on Terror Short’ – just listened to it and I was moved! Think you’d enjoy it!