I found these books propping up a coffee table at a thrift store in northern Maine, and I was instantly drawn to their dry subtitle, proclaiming them to be simply, “a catalog of ideas and information.” Both were published in 1973 – just a year before Vint Cerf would first use the term “internet” – and the series sought to deliver information in “packets” as swiftly as possible to readers, without the usually publishing lags or delays. Edited by John Brockman and Ed Rosenfeld, Real Time was in many ways the cultural predecessor to Brockman’s Reality Club, active from 1981–1996, which was itself a predecessor of the TED Conference, founded three years later in 1984. Brockman is a well-known literary agent and cultural impresario, as well as the founder of the Edge Foundation. Rosenfeld is notable for authoring The Book of Highs, a handbook for “altering consciousness without drugs.”

Real Time’s authors were very aware of the limits and delays created due to its printed form and its distribution through standard publishing channels. To address this, they supplemented the book with a video series called Cogitation, Ltd., which is explained at the close of Real Time 2 and is worth quoting at length:

Cogitation, Ltd is a limited partnership organization formed with the help of funds from friends, and dedicated to creating a real-time information network around the country. This is a necessary complementary activity to the Real Time project, as for all our talk of cutting down cultural-delay lags, we have yet to solve our own. In order to (1) finance Real Time, and (2) get national distribution, it is necessary to go through major book-distribution channels. The result is that Real Time 2 is now completed before Real Time 1 has even been published. Cogitation, Ltd will truly be a real-time project, an information journey that will travel cross-country to colleges and universities with video feedback, feedforward capability. A researcher is now on the road creating a basic tape bank on individuals whose work is listed in the catalogue. Once a bank of about twenty hours is taped, the information journey will commence, and will consist of a three-day stop for video screenings, video tapings, and symposia, as well as casual discussions about what we are doing. Each stop will contribute to the input-output programming process, and the tour will itself be its own content.

The structure of Real Time itself is basically that of a reader, with 108 entries on various topics grouped under the themes of Communication, Human Systems, Mind, Science & Technology, Trends, and People. Entries are limited to just a few pages and include ordering information for the book excerpted (all can be purchased by mail order through Real Time or from their respective publishers), a short introduction by one of the editors, and the excerpt itself. The whole thing has a incredibly bloglike feel, in retrospect, set in two columns of narrow Helvetica with illustrations peppered throughout. Though Real Time 2 alerts readers that a Real Time 3 is in the works, I haven’t yet been able to track it down. Still, the Real Time series is a real treat – a very special and groundbreaking series indeed.

Update: Real Time’s editor Ed Rosenfeld wrote me and kindly shared more info on the project:

John Brockman and I were friends in the early 1970s. We both admired the Whole Earth Catalog, especially the first section: Understanding Whole Systems. We thought that a “catalogue” focusing on those kinds of interests would make a great book. As we formulated the project, it seemed that it could be more of a series of books, perhaps one or two a year. We proposed it that way and every single publisher rejected it. Finally the head of the Anchor Books imprint loved it and thought the idea of a periodical-style series was a good one. Doubleday contracted us to do the first two books in the series. The name of the book came about because of our floundering around for the appropriate title. We were thinking about words to play off of being “relevant,” but nothing caught our ears. The term “real time” came from computing, but was not widely used outside of batch processing and related processes. Our major sense was that there were so many fascinating trends and ideas in so many disciplines, yet very little interdisciplinary communications. We wanted to get people in a specific field to pay attention to what was happening of interest in diverse other fields, often times overlapping concerns from one field of endeavor to another. With Cogitation, Ltd., Gerd Stern was a friend of John’s since the 60’s, and we met and all liked the idea for the traveling program to support the books, especially on college campuses; but, the Cogitation tour never happened. From my vantage point now, after almost 40 years from when we first started the Real Time work, the Internet is the follow-up.

Ed also offered a correction to the information in my original post. Real Time 3, it seems, was never in the cards. My apologies for the error.