The Ethnosphere - Wade Davis

I was first introduced to the work of Wade Davis as an undergrad studying international relations in Canada. This video may take some time to load, but it is an incredible presentation absolutely worth waiting for. Davis is a National Geographic “Explorer in Residence”, and spends considerable energy working on the Society’s “Ethnosphere Project” - a project committed to preserving ethnic diversity. Davis documents and shares fascinating stories of the ingenuity and resourcefulness of indigenous peoples around the world. He argues that the complex global challenges facing the human race require a broad knowledge base and deep wisdom from which to draw inspiration and innovative solutions. He believes that the loss of ethnic diversity, most clearly seen in the rapid loss of linguistic diversity, depletes the richness our cultural heritage and weakens our pool of collective wisdom.

Wade Davis has been described as “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet, and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity.” An ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, he holds degrees in anthropology and biology, and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent over three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among 15 indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6,000 botanical collections. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies and to Borneo where he lived among the nomadic Penan in the forests of Sarawak.In recent years Davis’s research efforts have taken him to East Africa, Tibet, Polynesia, Mali, equatorial West Africa, New Guinea, Vanuatu, and the high Arctic of Nunuvut and Greenland. Author of ten books, including The Serpent and the Rainbow, One River, and Light at the Edge of the World, he is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lowell Thomas Medal (Explorers Club) and the Lannan Foundation $125,000 prize for literary nonfiction. In 2004 he was made an Honorary Member of the Explorers Club, one of 20 so named in the 100-year history of the club.

His film credits include Light at the Edge of the World, a four-hour series shot in Rapanui, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Nunuvut, Greenland, and Peru, that aired internationally on the National Geographic Channel in the spring of 2007. Phantastica, a two-hour special inspired by his books One River and The Lost Amazon, will air in spring 2008 on The History Channel. Davis recently completed a third film project, a 3-D IMAX film, Water Planet: A Grand Canyon Adventure, which will appear in the spring of 2008.

Powers of Ten

This 9 minute film was produced by designers Charles and Ray Eames for IBM, in 1977. A work of stunning vision, it was the result of an exceptional collaborative effort between big business and independent designers and artists. I think it is a fitting starting point for this blog, as the spirit and vision of the film embody the goals and mission of UltraFuture.

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