Technologies rearrange materials with ingenious recipes and formulas. More people create more technologies, which in turn generates more people. In recent decades technology has enabled the “demographic transition” which lowers birthrates and raises income per person even higher as population levels off. This video records a presentation I gave at the Long Now foundation in May of 2009. It was my first public presentation of the ideas behind the concept of a Charter City.

The specific focus in this presentation was the co-evolution of technology and culture (or rules) and the idea that new cities can help people escape the traps – the stationary points where this dynamic of co-evolution can get stuck.