Global Business Network (GBN) is a consulting firm that grew out of Shell’s Planning Group, Stanford Research Institute, and Stewart Brand and the community based around his “Whole Earth” businesses. In other words, it’s an unlikely alliance of oil industry insiders, mad scientists, and hippie visionaries. They specialize in “scenario planning.”
Schwartz has also studied Tibetan Buddhism and worked closely with Willis Harman, a key figure in the transpersonal psychology movement in San Francisco. Before accepting a post at Shell’s Planning Group, he worked at SRI International, the famed Menlo Park, California, research outfit that came up with the widely used psychographic measuring system known as VALS (for “values and life styles”). SRI also developed the computer mouse. Schwartz’s is a tame résumé by the standards of GBN.
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Global Business Network (GBN) is a consulting firm that grew out of Shell‘s Planning Group, Stanford Research Institute, and Stewart Brand and the community based around his “Whole Earth” businesses. In other words, it’s an unlikely alliance of oil industry insiders, mad scientists, and hippie visionaries. They specialize in “scenario planning.”
Schwartz has also studied Tibetan Buddhism and worked closely with Willis Harman, a key figure in the transpersonal psychology movement in San Francisco. Before accepting a post at Shell’s Planning Group, he worked at SRI International, the famed Menlo Park, California, research outfit that came up with the widely used psychographic measuring system known as VALS (for “values and life styles”). SRI also developed the computer mouse. Schwartz’s is a tame résumé by the standards of GBN.
That quote’s from a long Wired article on GBN. It was written by GBN member Joel Garreau, who notes:
This article on GBN was commissioned by a magazine whose executive editor is a member of GBN. It is running in a magazine which mentions a GBN member in almost every issue. Four GBNers have already been on its cover. And, as I mentioned at the beginning, it was written by a journalist who is a member of GBN.
Douglas Rushkoff has described Wired as a newsletter for GBN:
It’s the promotional arm of the Global Business Network. They’re a group of advisors who are pretty much the same as the masthead of Wired. They hire themselves out at $10-$15,000 an hour and when someone gets to join the GBN, their face appears on the front of the magazine and they’re touted as the new great media theorist. When a company hires the GBN and follows their advice, their director magically appears on the front cover.
(This was in 1997, before Conde Nast acquired Wired in 1998, and The Monitor Group acquired GBN in 2000)
One of the various projects of the Esalen Institute was the Physics Consciousness Research Group, founded to study time travel, ESP, consciousness after death, and other fringe subjects. Various people have made the claim that Physics Consciousness Research Group was the inspiration for the movie Ghostbusters. Jack Sarfatti, one of the founders of the Physics Consciousness Research Group, is a physicist and archetypal “mad scientist” – in fact, he claims to be the inspiration for both from Back to the Future and Egon Spangler from Ghostbusters.
SRI International (previously known as Stanford Research Institute) is the clearest influence on the DHARMA Initiative (though DARPA is closer in name. Incidentally, SRI has been known to work for DARPA). SRI is a non-profit research institute working in a broad range of fields including, according to Wikipedia: “communications and networks, computing, economic development and science and technology policy, education, energy and the environment, engineering systems, pharmaceuticals and health sciences, homeland security and national defense, materials and structures, and robotics.”
Things got weird for SRI during the 60s and 70s, when it was engaged in parapsychology and LSD research. They hired L. Ron Hubbard, tested Uri Geller’s claims, and experimented with remote viewing.
They also compiled a report called The Changing Images of Man, contracted and funded by The Charles F. Kettering Foundation (the real life equivalent of Alvar Hanso?).
The thing that stuck out from last night’s episode for me was the opening sequence: it reminds me of the time machine project from the Invisibles. For the unfamiliar: in the Invisibles, there was an occult corporate conspiracy (headed up by an Asian scientist, natch) building a time machine with, IIRC, help from information being received from the future.
I’ve mentioned the consciousness time travel bit from The Invisibles before
To be honest, I never quite figured out the narrative of the Invisibles there at the end, but I get the impression it’s supposed to be a game of some sort. Ben and Widmore are apparently playing some sort of game. Hmm.
I suspect time travel is responsible for most of the paranormal/supernatural phenomena that have occurred – Alpert’s apparent non-aging, the whispers, Walt appearing in places he shouldn’t be, appearances by the dead, moving the Island, etc. The “synchronicities” that occur regularly could be explained by time travels deliberately manipulating certain events.
Lost: Overview of My Current Theories
See also: LOST Theory: The Island is the Village from the Prisoner (which contains some Prisoner spoilers).
And: Lost Theories
This was a brief, badly written, post I made at Lost Theories dot com some time back. The site seems to be defunct now, so I’m posting this here:
The Prisoner was a British TV series that aired in 1967. It took place in a mysterious location called “The Village.” The location of the Village was never pinned down conclusively, it seems to have either been somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, or perhaps in England – a single gas tank’s drive from London.
The Village is apparently destroyed in the last episode. During this destruction, the Rover(s) – strange egg shaped robots that act as guards of the Village – are seen melting into smoke. Is this the Smoke Monster?
The Village was administered by a group of strange, paranoid individuals doing some sort of research – usually assumed to be espionage related, but the last episode casts doubt on this. It seems they may be more interested in psychological or sociological research than espionage. They do a lot of work with brainwashing and mind control. Could this be the Dharma Initiative?
The Village administered by someone called “Number 2.” Every episode has a new Number 2. The nature and identity of “Number 1” is never made clear. Could Ben be the current Number 2, with Hanso (or someone else) being Number 1?
Since I wrote this, it’s become clear that Jacob is Number 1, and John Locke is the new Number 2.
Also: “In the ABC TV series, a group of survivors is trapped on a mysterious island. In the second season, they open a hatch that leads to a large bunker. A cache of food inside is labelled in an identical Albertus font to that used in The Prisoner.” Source: The Prisoner references in popular culture entry on Wikipedia
More Info
Watch every episode of the Prisoner online for free (US only?)
What was Alternative 3? What does it have to do with Lost?
Alternative 3 is a television programme, broadcast in the UK in 1977 as a fictional hoax, an heir to Orson Welles’ radio production of The War of the Worlds. Purporting to be an investigation into Britain’s contemporary “brain drain,” Alternative 3 uncovered a plan to make the moon and Mars habitable in the event of a terminal environmental catastrophe on Earth.
The programme was originally meant to be broadcast on April Fools Day, 1977. While its broadcast was delayed until June by industrial action, the credits explicitly date the film to April 1st. Alternative 3 ended with credits for the actors involved in the production and featured interviews with a fictitious American astronaut. However, some conspiracy theory supporters have argued Alternative 3 is at least partly true.
Above is a screencap of Ben’s secret door from last night’s episode. Here’s some information about what the symbols mean.
More to come…
Cobalt connects Lost to, well, pretty much everything.
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