Ask Stewart Brand About Protecting Resources and Reviving Extinct Species

samzenpus (5) writes "Stewart Brand trained as a biologist at Stanford, was associated with Ken Kesey and the "Merry Pranksters", and served as an Infantry officer in the U.S. Army. His books include Whole Earth Discipline: The Rise of Ecopragmatism, The Clock of the Long Now, How Buildings Learn, and The Media Lab. He is the founder/editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, the co-founder of The Long Now Foundation, The WELL, and the Global Business Network. His latest project, Revive & Restore, may be his most ambitious yet. Revive and Restore aims to bring back extinct species and provide genetic rescue for endangered species that are spiraling down with inbreeding problems. Mr. Brand has agreed to answer any questions you may have but please limit yourself to one question per post."

Comments

LSD and technology

[CRCulver]

How have your experiences with LSD affected your later work? (For those unaware, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters went around turning people onto the substance, as documented in Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test ). Many participants in the counterculture speak of having new spiritual perspectives after taking LSD, but has it given you any special insights into working with new computer technology?

Should we start with Threatened Species?

[retroworks]

Shouldn't we first try to transplant elephants and rhinos to Texas, and Siberian tigers to Canada, and Rwandan gorillas to central America? It has been politically incorrect to risk "invasive species", and in the 1970s we thought this would backfire. But if we are going to revive extinct species, it seems we've given up on the habitat specialization anyway, and perhaps should save species while they still have genetic diversity by relocating them to stable and law enforced environments.