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October 04, 2004
The Long Now
Brian Eno speaks to the Long Now Foundation in a series of Seminars About Long Term Thinking.
Q:Can you give us some examples of long now thinking, historical that we are reaping the benefits of now?
BE: Well there’s one very famous example, it’s an English example, there’s a college in Oxford called New College, which was built about five hundred years ago. The college is a big high building and it has very thick oak beams to support the ceiling. About twenty years ago those beams started to appear to be in such bad condition that it was necessary to replace them, so the dean of the college said to the head gardener - because Oxford has a lot of lands and forests, actually all over England – “We need a lot of oaks - what shall we do?” And the gardener said when they built that college they planted a grove of oaks, to replace those beams, and so they had been planted five hundred years in advance of their need – so that’s a kind of long term thinking. I don’t know that anybody is doing that kind of thing now.
BE: Well there’s one very famous example, it’s an English example, there’s a college in Oxford called New College, which was built about five hundred years ago. The college is a big high building and it has very thick oak beams to support the ceiling. About twenty years ago those beams started to appear to be in such bad condition that it was necessary to replace them, so the dean of the college said to the head gardener - because Oxford has a lot of lands and forests, actually all over England – “We need a lot of oaks - what shall we do?” And the gardener said when they built that college they planted a grove of oaks, to replace those beams, and so they had been planted five hundred years in advance of their need – so that’s a kind of long term thinking. I don’t know that anybody is doing that kind of thing now.
Posted by Ghost of a flea at October 4, 2004 07:37 AM
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Comments
That is great. I recall hearing a piece on Maritime CBC radio, which is much more resource focused than the national service. A guy thought about his retirement when he was in his teens and planted a grove of 200 black oaks. The limbed them annually and they are each worth something like $25-50,000 as clear unknotted lumber. He is now willing the "oak farm" to the grand kids.
Posted by: Alan at October 4, 2004 11:33 AM