“Long Shorts” – short films that exemplify long-term thinking.  Please submit yours in the comments section…

Audience members at Arthur Ganson’s Seminar on September 14, 02009 were among the first viewers of The Lava Project Documentary, which premiered in our new Long Shorts series – short videos that explore, explain, or exemplify long-term thinking and responsibility.

The Lava Project Documentary was created by White Elephant DesignLab, a group of designers who explore natural phenomena and experiment with various materials and their external influences. Earlier this year, the group created a piece at the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii that was inspired by our promotion of long-term thinking through use of the five-digit date. Using a “02009″ stamp made of hardwood and aluminum, they imprinted the congealing surface crust of Pāhoehoe lava in order to equip the emerging lithosphere with its date of origin.

“We developed the idea of using this symbol only when we had already arrived on the island,” says Tobias Kestel of the design team. “We thought it was just the right symbol to use in this context of volcanic activity. Processes of new land being formed by lava flows have been going on for billions of years on the planet, which provided the perfect ground for embossing your symbol of long-term thinking.”

“We are aware,” Kestel adds, “that some people might still argue that we actually did alter the environment there. At the same time, the symbolic value and the message and discussions our action will provoke can be and will be of relevance, even if only a few people will start to think differently after having seen the results and having learned about your project, as we will always promote our project together with the reference to The Long Now Foundation.”

For additional photos and information about The Lava Project Documentary, visit the White Elephant DesignLab website.

There is new media available from our monthly series, the Seminars About Long-term Thinking. Stewart Brand’s summaries and audio downloads or podcasts of the talks are free to the public; Long Now members can view HD video of the Seminars and comment on them.

Watch the video of  Stewart Brand’s “Rethinking Green”

What seems to be the first real optical archival digital tech is now shipping. The Millenniata product is a type of DVD storage that uses a mechanical scratching process, instead of a thermal process, making the media vastly more stable.  The disks are in the current DVD standard and the company claims they are therefore backwards compatable to normal players.  To write your own disk however you will need the $1700 writer and one of the special blank disks that range from $16-$25ea depending on qty.

If the companies claims on life-span of the media are true this is a major milestone in commodity level archival media.  I do think however that they really need some sort of marking on the tops of all the blank media that explains what the DVD data stadard is and how to read it.  Otherwise in a 100 years, I cant imagine that many people will remember…

The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics is holding its 10th anniversary Quantum to Cosmos Festival this month in Waterloo, Ontario.  The 10 day extravaganza has the theme this year of “Ideas for the Future” and seeks to “take a global audience from the strange world of subatomic particles to the outer frontiers of the universe.”

They’ve got lots of great lectures that are free to view online, including several by speakers in our seminar series:

• Stewart Brand will be on The Agenda with Steve Paikin Friday night to discuss science’s evolving role in society and on Saturday he’ll be giving his own lecture on his Ecopragmatist Manifesto, Whole Earth Discipline.
• Peter Diamandis spoke on Sunday about the X Prize Foundation.
• Neal Stephenson spoke with Lee Smolin and Jaron Lanier about using fiction as a window into science and he’ll be joining Tuesday night’s panel on The Agenda with Steve Paikin to discuss our increasingly wired lives.

There are many other scientists and thinkers on the schedule, and each of these lectures will become available online shortly after the live event, so keep checking back on the full list to see what’s new.  (A play button will appear on the icon for each event once the video is released.)

The Long Now Foundation’s monthly Seminars About Long-term Thinking

presents Sander van der Leeuw on “The Archaeology of Innovation”

Wednesday November 18, 02009 at 7:30 pm at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco

Long Now Members can reserve 2 seats, join today!

or you can purchase tickets for $10 each.

About this Seminar:

Are we the first civilization to try and innovate our way out of climate change? How have past societies engineered sustainable solutions to a shifting world?

John Goodman is an engineer that admires intuition, a reluctant artist who enjoys elegant approximations. His best known creation,
The Annosphere, was recently showcased at the Cambridge Science Festival in Massachusetts, where he lives and works.

The Annosphere tells time, but more usefully, it presents time. It shows you sunrise and sunset, the start of spring and the winter solstice. It lets you see on your desk what you can’t see in the world: the steady pace of time, the subtle day to day changes in sunlight and shadow, the cycles that run through each year.

(more…)

The Long News: stories that might still matter fifty, or a hundred, or ten thousand years from now.

At a recent conference, Ray Kurzweil spoke about a future when tiny robots will swarm through our bloodstreams, repairing damage and curing disease. Well, the truth is, that future is already here — if you’re a mouse.

A sampling of recent news stories of tiny treatments:

1. Ouch: Nanobees zap tumors with real bee venom

2. Nanotherapies from many different labs:
Nanotech gene therapy kills ovarian cancer in mice
Researchers effectively treat tumors with use of nanotubes
Gel heals injured brain and bone

3. More fun with magnets:
Nanomagnets guide stem cells to damaged tissue
Using magnetism to turn drugs on and off

4. It’s not just for mice: Robot can crawl through human body

5.  Ouch, again: Mosquito bites used to deliver malaria “vaccine”

6. And further speculation from Dr. Kurzweil: Nanotech could make humans immortal by 2040

We invite you to submit Long News story suggestions here.

Some months ago the good folks at Meetup.com set up Long Now with our own Meetup domain http://longnow.meetup.com/.  Since that time over 450  people have signed up and several meetup groups have become active around the world.  These groups have met to discuss the Seminar Series, host a local speaker on long-term thinking, go to a related event, or just get together to discuss similar interests.  Brian Eno and I have attended them in London, Laura Welcher (director of the Rosettta Project) spoke at one in Chicago, and groups are now going in Paris, Brussels, New York, Italy, and Portland.

The quality of people and discussion has been excellent at all the group meetings I have seen.  Please do sign up if you have the interest, and let us know if you need any help getting a group going in your area.  Long Now Associate Bryan Campen is working on a “starter kit” for these groups and we now have a mailing list for all the group leaders to connect with eachother.

There is new media available from our monthly series, the Seminars About Long-term Thinking.  Stewart Brand’s summaries and audio downloads or podcasts of the talks are free to the public; Long Now members can view HD video of the Seminars and comment on them.

Read the summary of Stewart Brand’s “Rethinking Green”

Listen to the Audio of Stewart Brand’s “Rethinking Green” (downloads tab)

Globalizing Green

Brand built his case for rethinking environmental goals and methods on two major changes going on in the world. The one that most people still don’t take into consideration is that power is shifting to the developing world, where 5 out of 6 people live, where the bulk of humanity is getting out of poverty by moving to cities and creating their own jobs and communities (slums, for now).

He noted that history has always been driven by the world’s largest cities, and these years they are places like Mumbai, Lagos, Dhaka, São Paulo, Karachi, and Mexico City, which are growing 3 times faster and 9 times bigger than cities in the currently developed world ever did…

Read the rest of Stewart Brand’s Summary