Lives, works & the ideas between them
Meet the minds that changed how we see the world.
Follow a life. Find a book. Lose yourself in a thread.
Thread 01 · History of computing
From the world brain to tools for thought. Nine lives connected by a question: how might we think together?
A life is a doorway
Books, recordings, films and essays. Choose someone to begin.
Spiritual Entertainer
A cosmic riddler, fantastically sonorous and eloquent. Known for having bridged the divide between eastern philosophies & western audiences.
Psychedelic Raconteur
A botanist of strange ideas, weaving plants, language and culture into excursions beyond the familiar. A singular voice at the edge of the map.
Media Theorist
An investigator of invisible environments. He turned attention from what our media say to what their forms do to our senses and societies.
Astrophysicist
A guide to the immense and the intimate, bringing distant worlds into view while asking us to care for the small one we share.
Philosopher
A restless examiner of inherited values, writing in aphorisms, arguments and thunderclaps. His invitation: question deeply, create bravely, and learn to affirm a life.
Cartographer of Futures
A novelist who used imagined worlds to question his own. Beyond time machines and invaders, he dreamed of knowledge held in common.
Thinker of the Noosphere
A Jesuit and palaeontologist who looked at human thought on a planetary scale. His noosphere placed minds within a larger story of life.
Architect of Associations
An engineer who imagined a desk where knowledge could be joined into trails. His memex gave the wandering mind a machine to think with.
Juggler of Information
A mathematician with an inventor’s playfulness. He found a language for switching circuits and a theory for sending messages through noise.
Augmenter of Intellect
A systems thinker who asked how people could become better at solving difficult problems together. The mouse was one piece of a much larger dream.
Maker of Powerful Ideas
A mathematician who put children in command of the computer. Turtles, programs and things made by hand became ways to think about thinking.
Inventor of Dynamic Media
A computer scientist who imagined a personal medium for children of all ages. A place to read, draw, model and make ideas come alive.
Maker of Visible Thought
A designer pursuing media that help people understand what they create. His demonstrations turn hidden processes into things we can see and explore.
Cultivator of Understanding
A researcher asking what might come after the book. His work explores media that help ideas become something a reader can remember and use.