Philanthropic stamina

10,000 families in the US, Katherine Fulton reported, have assets of $100 million or more. That’s up from 7,000 just a couple years ago. Most of that money is “on the sidelines.” The poor and the middle class are far more generous in their philanthropy, proportionally, than the very wealthy. . .   Read More

The power law is the shape of our age

You know something is up when an audience member is taking cell phone photos of the presenter’s slides for instant transmittal to a business partner.

Chris Anderson does have killer slides, full of exuberant detail, defining the exact shape of the still emerging opportunity space. . .   Read More

Community-built content rules
Vision is one of the most powerful forms of long-term thinking. Jimmy Wales, founder and president of the all-embracing online encyclopedia Wikipedia, examines how vision drives and defines that project and its strategy— and how it fits into the even larger world and prospects of “free culture.”

“The design. . .   Read More

On necessary heresy

With gentle demeanor and tight argument, Sam Harris carried an overflow audience into the core of one of the crucial issues of our time: What makes some religions lethal? How do they employ aggressive irrationality to justify threatening and controlling non-believers as well as believers? What should be our response?

Harris. . .   Read More

Time capsule secrets

High school classes and world’s fairs do it. Universities and builders and companies and municipalities do it. They bury little hoards of things they think people in the future will treasure— the future being ten years or ten thousand or never (most time capsules are immediately forgotten). Something strange, deep, and. . .   Read More

The Long Now

Brian told the origins of his realizations about the “small here” versus the “big here” and the “short now” versus the “long now.” He noted that the Big Here is pretty well popularized now, with exotic restaurants everywhere, “world” music, globalization, and routine photos of the whole earth. Instant world news and. . .   Read More