The foundation agreed in 2000, real by 2006 — Hare chaired its technical advisory board, and its wish was the Encyclopedia of Life
This is Jonathan Hare's account, with its provenance shown. The person or organization named has not yet claimed or corrected it.
The E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation (EOWF). In Jonathan Hare's account it was agreed with Wilson at their first meeting, after Hare had renamed his company Consilient in order to reach him; the 2001 collapse cost the plan five years; and on the Aspen Meadows path in 2006, walking with Bill Joy, Wilson told him it existed — funded by Jay Short, who chaired it, with Nobel laureates, Jeffrey Sachs, Steven Pinker and Harrison Ford on its board. It won the TED Prize, and the wish was an Encyclopedia of Life: every species, its genome and phenotype, what it eats and what eats it.
Hare was made chairman of its technical advisory board. In that capacity he sat through the two-day December 2006 meeting at Google — the meeting at which Google's engineers told Wilson the wish was impossible — and took the same question up to Microsoft Research afterward. The Foundation's Consilience Initiative specification of February 2007 is the record's earliest statement of the seven services that map onto the present architecture; the December 2006 McKinsey thread (S-078) opened into it.
Each entry below carries its own provenance — the source, and how it was processed. That is the condition on which this graph can be extended by anyone without degrading.
The trail exists so that people who were there can reconstruct their own memories, recognize what they helped incubate, and add to or correct the record — or forward the few pages that belong to someone they know.
'Remember that foundation we talked about? We got all these Nobel Laureates, Jeffrey Sachs, Steven Pinker, and Harrison Ford on the board.' Then the TED Prize, then Google, then the technical advisory board — and a wish that the most capable technical leadership on earth said would take a major breakthrough and ten to twenty years.
There is no single root. This is one view of the graph, from this node — what you see depends on where you enter and what you are looking for.
The commission, the foundation, and the name
Open →chairman and funderDiversa's chief executive; the EOWF chairman on the December 2006 thread; the Haseltine friendship already in the record
Open →the December 2006 summit“Your wish is impossible” — December 2006
Open →the word, and the InitiativeThe unification of knowledge — and why the ladder stops
Open →the Aspen pass that led to the pathFriend and patron — who let a broke man live her life for a weekend at a time
Open →chairman, technical advisory boardConsilient Architect — the node this graph was seeded from
Open →the sponsored keynote before the pathWilson's magazine of choice for his excerpts; sponsor of his 2006 Aspen Ideas keynote — the path where Hare met him with Bill Joy; owned since 2017 by Emerson Collective
Open →President and CEOPresident and CEO, E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation; EP3 Sustainability Fellow; agreed to participate in the EP3 Nature and Humanity Trust initiative
Open →Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.
The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-169The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-181The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-188The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.
Correct anything wrong, add what only you know, or claim this entry as your own. Write to evidence@qpncatalyst.io and Jonathan directly (both are on the button) — a timestamped confirmation comes back with your submission attached, as your own independent record. No account, no permission, no institutional standing required.
Public contributions earn Publicity Premium; bringing others who were there earns Cascade Premium. Everything is valued retrospectively as outcomes verify, so nothing has to be priced up front.
Correct this entry → Add a story, photo or link → Browse the graph →