At my recent visit to the Long Now Foundation’s talk by Ed Burtynksy, the organization’s founder Stewart Brand, author of the great How Building’s Learn, made an observation about mundanity I thought was interesting:

In a nutshell, it was that when reading a contemporary magazine, people generally try to skip the ads. When reading a vintage magazine, however, people often skip to the ads.

What is it about the passage of time that makes something like a magazine ad so interesting, while the articles become less interesting?

There are a lot of answers to that question, but that isn’t the point. It was just a simple observation I enjoyed and wanted to share.

Tags: Long Term Thinking