I’m just reading a copy of an old book that I picked up in a junk shop a few years ago trying to find some inspiration for a TED talk I’m doing in Munich in a few days. The book is called Originality and dates from 1917. Here’s a rather choice passage.

“We have had a surfeit of archeology and of the study of modern conditions: we want more prophesy. Here is a question in the immeasurable: how much more imagination has been spent in reconstructing the life of Rome and Athens than in forecasting the future of London?”  Love it.

BTW, I’ve just done an update to the extinction timeline I devised with Ross Dawson many years ago. Thanks for Wayde and the guys at Principals in Sydney for helping with the visualization. The plan was to create a second axis showing the ‘social impact’ of each extinction, but this proved almost impossible. I’ll create a link and stick it under ‘trend maps’ and nowandnext.com when I get a chance.