“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” – Greek proverb
It’s no secret – I love reading. In particular, I love reading books, real, paper books that don’t hurt your eyes and don’t require cables or charging.
I also love future thinking and foresight.
Therefore, it is completely unsurprising that I also love the forest library of the future.
The library of the future is a forest of one thousand trees planted in 2014 with the purpose of being cut down and turned into books 100 years in the future, the year 2114.
The future forest (or book embryo incubator as I like to call it), which is situated in Oslo, Norway (a priority destination on my travel bucket list) contains enough trees to print 1,000 copies of 100 never-before-read books (at least one of which was authored by dystopian futurist, Margret Atwood). The future book manuscripts are currently stored in a secret “silent room” hidden on the top floor of the Oslo library.
What a thought: planting trees you will never live to see grow tall, writing books that will not be published within your lifetime.
I see the project as a love letter to the future souls who will one day take their place in our world.
There is something truly beautiful about living in the long now and planting seeds that will only be reaped by future generations.
We need more of this: More foresight. And less selfish obsession with the short now.
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