It began on a New Jersey beach. Frans Lanting was photographing horseshoe crabs for a story about how they are being ground up for eel bait and at the same time their blood is used for drug testing—a $100 million industry. The crabs have primordial eyesight, which they employ mainly for finding sex partners. Photographing the horseshoes having a spawning orgy one spooky twilight, Lanting felt like he was suddenly back in the Silurian, 430 million years ago…

(c) Frans Lanting

So Lanting and his wife Chris Eckstrom set out in search of “time capsules,” places on the present Earth where he could find and photograph all the ancient stages of life. A two-year project expanded to seven years.

On a live volcano in Hawaii he found the naked planet of 4.3 billion years ago— molten rock flowing, zero life. “Your boots melt. You smell early Earth.” On the western coast of Australia he shot a rare surviving living reef of stromatolites, made of the cyanobacteria who three billion years ago transformed the Earth by filling the atmosphere with oxygen. Lanting took pains to photograph without blue sky in the background, because the sky was not blue until the cyanobacteria had generated a planet’s worth of oxygen.

Life’s journey through time is a story of innovations, Lanting said. Lichens were the first to colonize land, followed by shelled creatures who could carry ocean inside them— crabs, turtles, and snails. In Australia Lanting photographed mudskippers—amphibious fish who use their pectoral fins to crawl around on mud and even climb trees.

Dinosaurs once browsed on land plants that defended themselves with ferocious spiky leaves. A survivor of that battle is the Araucaria tree in Chile. Lanting planted one in his garden near Santa Cruz and photographed it there.

Study of the first feathered reptile, the archaeopteryx, suggested that the contemporary bird with the most similar flight style is the frigatebird, and Lanting photographed one looking like an airborne fossil in the Galapagos Islands.

Asteroids and climate change made new niches and new innovations. Following the Cretaceoous extinction 65 million years ago, mammals deployed their toothed jaws. Drier climate 25 million years ago created grasslands. When the forests dried, some apes took to walking upright in the savannahs of Africa. And some of those got around to analyzing DNA and noticing that life’s entire history is written there.

Lanting ended his dazzling show with two demonstrations. One was an 8-minute segment of an hour-long orchestral version of “Life’s Journey Through Time,” composed by Philip Glass, with a brilliant multi-media version of Lanting’s photos. The music and the image dynamics gain complexity stage by stage in synch with the growing complexity of life. (It would be glorious to see this performed locally with the San Francisco Symphony. The ideal occasion would be the opening of the new California Academy of Sciences building in Golden Gate Park next year.)

Lanting also did a quick demo of the timeline version of his photos (and videos) on his website. The level of its sophistication drew cheers and applause from the Web-savvy San Francisco audience. See for yourself: http://www.lifethroughtime.com/experience.html

–Stewart Brand

The take home version of this talk is Lanting’s book, Life: Ajourney Through Time, and is a stunning oversized edition published by Taschen.

P.S. Lanting’s presentation in particular is worth seeing in high-quality video. It will soon be viewable online by the Long Now Membership, which can be joined for $8/month ($96/year) here.

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Forwarded to me by Stewart Brand is an amazing article from Archaology Magazine on the construction of the Great Pyramids. After analyzing a 25 year old micro-gravimetric study that showed a spiraling sub structure, it was determined that the pyramids were built with a spiraling ramp as part of the internal structure.

A microgravimetry survey of the Great Pyramid in the 1980s yielded the enigmatic image at right. Less dense areas (indicated in green) seem to correspond to an internal ramp proposed by Jean-Pierre Houdin (diagram). (Dassault Systemes; Courtesy EDF)

While many have asserted that a ramp, either spiraling or straight, may have been used, this study gives evidence of this ramp as an internal structure that was then covered up as the pyramid was completed.

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Welcome to the newly released Long Now Web-log. This is where you will find Stewart Brand’s Seminar wrap ups, as well as stories and musings relevant to long term thinking and updates on various Long Now projects. The contributors and editors of this blog include members of the Long Now Foundation’s board (primarily Kevin Kelly), staff, and other co-horts. If you have a suggested entry please submit it to services@longnow.org.

You may also be wondering what happenned to our discussion pages. Due to low activity, and constant spam assaults, we are discontinuing that section. For the moment they are still up, and can be found in the ‘Participate‘ section. In the next few weeks we will be migrating some content over to this blog and then archiving the rest as flat HTML files.

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The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900 ran a very brave list of predictions by one John Elfreth Watkins. Some are quite accurate, some wrong, and many are plain odd. Although grouped into 25 predictions, each one is a collection of not entirely related ideas. Some samples:

Prediction #1: There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America and its possessions by the lapse of another century. Nicaragua will ask for admission to our Union after the completion of the great canal. Mexico will be next. Europe, seeking more territory to the south of us, will cause many of the South and Central American republics to be voted into the Union by their own people.

Prediction #2: The American will be taller by from one to two inches. His increase of stature will result from better health, due to vast reforms in medicine, sanitation, food and athletics. He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five as at present – for he will reside in the suburbs. The city house will practically be no more. Building in blocks will be illegal. The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minutes only. A penny will pay the fare.

Prediction #6: Automobiles will be cheaper than horses are today. Farmers will own automobile hay-wagons, automobile truck-wagons, plows, harrows and hay-rakes. A one-pound motor in one of these vehicles will do the work of a pair of horses or more. Children will ride in automobile sleighs in winter. Automobiles will have been substituted for every horse vehicle now known. There will be, as already exist today, automobile hearses, automobile police patrols, automobile ambulances, automobile street sweepers. The horse in harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is today.

Prediction #16: There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.

Prediction #21: Hot and Cold Air from Spigots. Hot or cold air will be turned on from spigots to regulate the temperature of a house as we now turn on hot or cold water from spigots to regulate the temperature of the bath. Central plants will supply this cool air and heat to city houses in the same way as now our gas or electricity is furnished. Rising early to build the furnace fire will be a task of the olden times. Homes will have no chimneys, because no smoke will be created within their walls.

Prediction #22: Store Purchases by Tube. Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles. These tubes will collect, deliver and transport mail over certain distances, perhaps for hundreds of miles. They will at first connect with the private houses of the wealthy; then with all homes. Great business establishments will extend them to stations, similar to our branch post-offices of today, whence fast automobile vehicles will distribute purchases from house to house.

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There’s a very short but very telling story in Business Week on the demise of the longest-living company, based in Japan. After 14 centuries (!), this Buddhist temple construction company is going of out business. A few quotes:

The world’s oldest continuously operating family business ended its impressive run last year. Japanese temple builder Kongo Gumi, in operation under the founders’ descendants since 578, succumbed to excess debt and an unfavorable business climate in 2006. How do you make a family business last for 14 centuries? Kongo Gumi’s case suggests that it’s a good idea to operate in a stable industry. Few industries could be less flighty than Buddhist temple construction.

So what killed it after 14 centuries of adaption?

The circumstances of Kongo Gumi’s demise also offer some lessons. Despite its incredible history, it was a set of ordinary circumstances that brought Kongo Gumi down at last. Two factors were primarily responsible. First, during the 1980s bubble economy in Japan, the company borrowed heavily to invest in real estate. After the bubble burst in the 1992-93 recession, the assets secured by Kongo Gumi’s debt shrank in value. Second, social changes in Japan brought about declining contributions to temples. As a result, demand for Kongo Gumi’s temple-building services dropped sharply beginning in 1998.

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On January 2nd of 02007 Stewart Brand and I stepped into the cool deep past and unknown future of who begat who.

(picture: the granite genealogical vaults)

Since I began working on the 10,000 Year Clock project, and associated Library projects here at Long Now almost a decade ago, I have heard cryptic references to this archive. We have visited the nuclear waste repositories, historical sites, and many other long term structures to look for inspiration. However we had never found a way to see this facility. This is the underground bunker where the Mormons keep their genealogical backup data, deep in the solid granite cliffs of Little Cottonwood Canyon, outside Salt Lake City. UT.

The Church has been collecting genealogical data from all the sources it can get its hands on, from all over the world, for over 100 years. They have become the largest such repository, and the data itself is open to anyone who uses their website, or comes to their buildings in downtown Salt Lake City.

However they dont do public tours of the Granite Vaults where all the original microfilm is kept for security and preservation reasons. Since Stewart had recently given a talk at Brigam Young University we were able to request access, and the Church graciously took us out to lunch and gave us a tour.

(more…)

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One long-term project for the inhabitants of earth is to arm our planet against asteroid impacts. Knowing what is out there is a big part of that protection. This wide web page is one small illustration of the larger bodies in our solar system. It depicts any body larger than 200 miles. There’s far more of them that you might think. Lots of room to park.

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