It’s been 10 years now that I’ve been a hanger-on of Richard Saul Wurman.

We are legion, us hangers-on, and in Newport, Rhode Island, where RSW and his wife lived for 23 years, the place was set up in a way that made it possible for Mr. Wurman to receive guests in a fully-equipped office in what had once been a carriage house.

On the many occasions I visited with and interviewed RSW in his carriage-house office at the former “Firestone Cottage,” there were times when I was there all alone, while Mr. Wurman was minding something in the main house.

And when that happened, and after I’d done all the close examination of RSW’s enormous copy of the Nolli Map of Rome I could do, I then did what you would have done:

I rifled through some of his stuff.

Not anything on his desk— but I certainly moved some books around, and examined the many piles of physical press clippings and website print-outs etc. that he surrounds himself with. And on several occasions, I admired a laserdisc of content from TED2. There was no laserdisc player, however, so its contents have been a mystery to me other than what the packaging said. Until today, when RSW sent me this:

*There was that one time where the Wurmans invited a photographer into their kitchen, to shoot photos for a General Electric advertisement.