Podcast
How I Built This with Guy Raz
Sal Khan mentioned being inspired by this book at a young age, particularly the concept of preserving civilization through knowledge and its grand scale of thinking beyond one's immediate surroundings.
In seventh grade, I read the foundation series, Isaac Asimov, and the protagonist is someone named Harry Seldon, who's kind of a new form of academic that's a combination of mathematics, economics, hi...
— Episode: Khan Academy: Sal Khan
Episode: Khan Academy: Sal Khan
Sal Khan mentioned being inspired by this book at a young age, particularly the concept of preserving civilization through knowledge and its grand scale of thinking beyond one's immediate surroundings.
In seventh grade, I read the foundation series, Isaac Asimov, and the protagonist is someone named Harry Seldon, who's kind of a new form of academic that's a combination of mathematics, economics, history, psychology. And he's able to predict large scale historical movements.
And he sees through his science that the galactic empire is about to enter into a 10,000 year dark ages. And he decides to do something about it. He can't stop it from happening, but he can shorten it to a thousand years.
And the way he does that is by taking the galaxy's knowledge and putting it into a foundation at the periphery of the galaxy.
And I remember when I was seventh grade and I read that, I thought two things. One, why don't more people think on those scales? It feels so inspiring and epic to think on that scale well beyond ourselves.
And then the other aha from that book in seventh grade was like, yeah, Harry Seldon's right. Like the way to preserve civilization is really through knowledge. That is what defines a civilization and that is what defines human potential.