Every interview with a public figure should include the question "What have you been wrong about, and how did that change your views?" The answer will tell us if the person is intellectually honest or a tale spinner with delusions of infallibility. Stewart Brand More Quotes by Stewart Brand More Quotes From Stewart Brand Redefine the possible. Stewart Brand free-speech internet Excessively precise economic analysis can lead to assessing everything in terms of its easily measurable melt value - the value that thieves get from stealing copper wiring from isolated houses, that vandals got from tearing down Greek temples for the lead joints holding the marble blocks together, that shortsighted timber companies get from liquidating their forests. The standard to insist on is live value. What is something worth when it's working? Stewart Brand block greek house Style is time’s fool. Form is time’s student Stewart Brand fool style growth Information wants to be free. Stewart Brand internet information want Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbaninzation, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power. Stewart Brand environmental growth years One advantage of a solar collector in space: It would be some kind of origami thing that would unfold and be relatively light because it doesn't have gravity to deal with. Stewart Brand space light would-be Many of my contemporaries in the developed world see subsistence farming as soulful and organic, but it is a poverty trap and an environmental disaster. Stewart Brand environmental poverty world When the government tries to run innovation, sometimes it does it well and sometimes it doesn't. So setting up a situation where the market runs innovation, which is a cap-and-trade idea, may well have more flexibility. Stewart Brand government running ideas How can I throw my life away in the least unhappy way? Stewart Brand unhappy way As you gain elevation [on the mountain] your IQ goes down - but your emotional affect goes up, which is great for having a mythic experience, whether you want to or not. Stewart Brand emotional soul god Civilization’s shortening attention span is mismatched with the pace of environmental problems. Stewart Brand environmental attention civilization There should always be in sight the draw — a kind of a beacon that draws you on through the labyrinth. Stewart Brand labyrinth kind sight There's no unemployment in squatter cities. Everyone works. One-sixth of humanity is there. It's soon going to be more than that. Stewart Brand unemployment cities humanity Science is the only news. When you scan a news portal or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same cyclical dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness; even the technology is predictable if you know the science behind it. Human nature doesn't change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly Stewart Brand fashion technology drama Historians will consider this a dark age. Science historians can read Galileos technical correspondence from the 1590s but not Marvin Minskys from the 1960s. Stewart Brand statistics age dark We have wished, we eco-freaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion-guilt-free at last! Stewart Brand technology garden age Art flouts convention. Convention became convention because it works. Stewart Brand conventions art We are as gods and might as well get good at it. Stewart Brand wells might The technology of synthetic biology is currently accelerating at four times the rate of Moore's Law. It's been doing that since 2005, and it's likely to continue. Stewart Brand four technology law If you don't like bacteria, you're on the wrong planet. Stewart Brand bacteria planets ifs
