#Toynbee tiles meaning movie#

The Toynbee Collector takes the ideas of the late British historian Arnold Toynbee, and, in a sci-fi setting, makes the case for engaging the future by taking leaps into the unknown.

#Toynbee tiles meaning movie#

Most of the tile sets refer to the “Toynbee idea” - which gives the tiles their name - as well as to “Kubrick’s 2001.” Some also refer to “Planet Jupiter.” These phrases are most likely references to a Ray Bradbury story, The Toynbee Convector Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001 and, well, the planet Jupiter. And others accuse the United States and its government of conspiracies sans detail. On particular set of tiles - believed to be an outlier - contains an anti-Semitic screed targeting executives of the Knight-Ridder conglomerate of newspapers. The messages vary in subject but typically involve some sort of conspiracy theory, with the alleged evil doers being the media (as seen above), the former Soviet Union (see this one found in Washington, D.C. What are they? These are called Toynbee Tiles, and the mystery behind them is as odd as their messages.įirst discovered in the 1980s, these tiles all follow the same general motif - a rectangular box of text using an eclectic font, strange if not downright poor command of the English language, and a disjointed writing style. In total, several hundred tile sets have been discovered in a few dozen American cities and at least four South America capitals.

Most of the early messages appeared on streets in Philadelphia, where they are still somewhat common. The tiles contain two messages: (1) “House of Hades, one man versus media’s henchmen in society, 2010” and (2) in the white boxes on opposite corners, “I will not rest until these butchers pay for everything they’ve done.” Similar messages have on roadways appeared throughout Manhattan (for example, seen here), Washington, D.C., and even in Sao Paolo, Brazil. The tiles shown sit squarely on Park Avenue in Manhattan, just south of 55th Street, in the middle of the southbound lane. The picture above (larger version here) was taken early one weekday morning.