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I regularly listen to the Long Now seminars about long term thinking. They are a real antidote to our normal to our normal day to day thinking which mostly focuses on immediate and short term thinking. If you’ve not listened to one before I really recommend that you take a look.

The most recent seminar featured Brewster Kahle founder and librarian of the storied Internet Archive.

All knowledge, to all people, for all time, for free

Universal access to all knowledge, Kahle declared, will be one of humanity’s greatest achievements. We are already well on the way. “We’re building the Library of Alexandria, version 2. We can one-up the Greeks!”

The achievements of the Internet Archive are already quite outstanding:

• The Web – 150 Billion web pages
• Texts – 3,125,761 books and documents
• Audio – 1,047,238 recordings
• Moving Images – 595,903 movies
• e Music Archive – 95,367 concerts

That got me thinking:

What about an Archive of Ideas?

There are many stories of ideas that were before their time – think Leonardo da Vinci

What about all the ideas for products and services that started of as one thing and ended up as something completely different – think Facebook.

Then there’s all the ideas that are just plan dumb – for now!

So how would an archive for ideas work?

• would you embargo ideas until you knew they would work?
• would putting your ideas “out there” motivate you to action?
• Would putting your ideas “out there” stimulate a discussion and help them evolve faster?
• Are we strong enough to accept other people’s critique?

Ideas are partially formed concepts, while texts, pictures, moving pictures, and audio file from the Internet Archive are fully formed and edited. Do we have the courage to share our thinking before it’s fully formed?

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• Embrace Ideas
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• Give your ideas power

Totally engaging video that explores and challenges what motivates us.

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Here is a really great story of a low tech creative event open to and well supported by the public. Have a look at the video below to get an idea of the age of the people involved and a what a marvelous way for everyone to get a little creative. A new spin on crowd-sourcing?

What I particularly like about this is that its teaching children (and by default the adults too?) that everyone has a creative capacity. It’s also teaching that every idea has a place amongst everyone else’s. So simple.

Now tell me – wouldn’t you like to see Chrysler or GM’s executives out in the carpark their chalk working on their recovery plan. I would!!

Dozens of boxes of thick, pastel sidewalk chalk sticks were being cracked open, the contents, purchased with private donor funds, distributed free to all who came. By day’s end much of the stock of 30,000 sticks had been worn down to tiny chips and nubs.

by Chris Knape | The Grand Rapids Press

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• An Archive for Ideas
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• Simple concept plus known form equals great idea