Humanity’s impact, nature’s resilience

Weisman’s book, The World Without Us, grew out of two questions, he said. One was, “How can I write a best-seller about the environment?” The answer to that was the second question: “How would the rest of nature behave without the constant pressure we put on it?”

On the border of Ukraine and Belarus is a small intact remnant—500,000 acres—of the primordial forest that once covered Europe from Siberia to Ireland. In the Puszcza Bialowieska, with its towering ash and linden trees and dense growth…
Read the rest of Stewart Brand’s Summary

Long Now has three events coming up over the next 8 days and we wanted to be sure you all had the right info for reserving tickets and making it out to all three.

• Long Now and Global Lives Project celebrates the opening of its first installation on Friday February 26th at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.  The event is free, but you’ll want to RSVP so you can be sure to get in.  The installation will be up on Saturday and Sunday over the weekend as well.
  
• Beth Noveck on “Transparent Government”  Thursday March 4, 02010 at 7:30 pm at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco. Long Now Members can reserve 2 seats free, or you can purchase tickets for $10 each.

• Alan Weisman on “World Without Us, World With Us.” Wednesday February 24 (Thanks for coming this event went great)

I always keep an eye out for sprial clock dial designs as it has always seemed to be a great way to make longer term dials on a clock face.  Jaeger-LeCoultre does it with a 1000 year dial on a limited edition run of their Atmos Du Millenaire Atlantis (seen below).  But the video above from a team in London called Aspiral is the first successful use of the spiral I have seen that allows you to know which rung of the spiral you should read.  Very fun. (Thanks to William Gibson’s twitter feed for this one @GreatDismal)

Jaeger-LeCoultre Atmos Du Millenaire Atlantis

Operators enter data into a "computer"

Patrick Tufts sent in these absolute gems.  Historical training videos for mechanical computers from the US Navy which used them as fire control computers.  It is so easy to forget where modern computers got their start.  We assume they are all gray boxes with monitors attached, but back in the good old days they were gray boxes with all kinds of sighting windows, levers, dials and whirring gears and cams.  So much more fun…

These videos are from Gene Slover’s US Navy Pages

• Basic Mechanisms in Firing Control Computers Part 1
• Basic Mechanisms in Firing Control Computers Part 2
• More on mechanical computers in the Navy

Those of you who went on the Mechanicrawl may remember the awesome demos of one of the most advanced forms of these mechanical computers called the TDC aboard the USS Pampanito submarine.  These computers were so well engineered that the US used them over modern digital computers even up into the 01980s. For the Clock of the Long Now we use many of the principles explained in detail in these (previously highly classified) videos.

A diagram of the super-elevation problem

For instance the three dimensional Equation of Time Cam in the clock operates on the same principle as the cam used to compute a projectiles “super-elevation”.

Three dimensional "super-elevation" cam

Long Now Digital Research Director Kurt Bollacker was recently published in New Scientist discussing the challenges in maintaining data for the long haul:

It seems unavoidable that most of the data in our future will be digital, so it behooves us to understand how to manage and preserve digital data so we can avoid what some have called the “digital dark age.” This is the idea—or fear!—that if we cannot learn to explicitly save our digital data, we will lose that data and, with it, the record that future generations might use to remember and understand us.

It’s a fairly long and comprehensive piece with lots of good advice and a good description of how the Rosetta Disk tries to address some of these problems.

Read the full article at New Scientist.

King’s College London president Rick Trainor announced recently that the university would be closing the chair of paleography, the UK’s only one.  Held by Professor David Ganz, the chair of paleography is the position that overseas a discipline many consider to be a vital component of historical research.  Paleography is the study of ancient manuscripts and has pieced together and deciphered many of the texts that have provided the basis for our knowledge of history.

Budget cuts are the precipitating factor, or rather “strategic disinvestment” as the official announcement goes, but they’re being met with some resistance.

“Palaeography is not simply an arcane auxiliary science,” says Professor Jeffrey Hamburger, chair of medieval studies at Harvard University. “It is as basic to the training and practice of ­historians as mastery of Dos or Unix might be to a computer scientist.”

-from the Guardian

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

In 1971, President Nixon declared “war on cancer.” In the forty years since, the U.S. has spent some $200 billion on research, but we’ve only cut the death rate by 5% (measured since 1950). Cancer still accounts for 13% of deaths worldwide. Still, there have been some recent developments that might show some promise:

1. This must be good news:
Scientists crack ‘entire genetic code’ of cancer

2. We’re discovering new methods of detection:
Microchip that can detect type and severity of cancer
Magnetic nanotags spot cancer in mice

3. There are a host of new therapies:
‘Nanobubbles’ kill cancer cells
Nanotech gene therapy kills ovarian cancer
Toward a nanomedicine for brain cancer
Killing cancer like a vampire slayer

4. It’s all about the switches:
Switch that turns on the spread of cancer discovered
Researchers create drug to keep tumor growth switched off

We invite you to submit Long News story suggestions here.

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

presents Beth Noveck on “Transparent Government”

Thursday March 4, 02010 at 7:30 pm at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco

Long Now Members can reserve 2 seats, join today!

or you can purchase tickets for $10 each.

About this Seminar:
President Obama’s first executive action was the Open Government Memorandum calling for more transparent, participatory, and collaborative government. It is likely that one of the longest lasting effects of the current administration will be how much it changed the culture of Washington by opening government data and pioneering innovations in policymaking.

As the United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer and leader of the President’s Open Government Initiative in the White House, Beth Noveck is in the forefront of the Federal government’s implementation of these changes.

• Twitter - up to the minute info on tickets and events
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• Long Now Meetups - join one or start your own

Rosetta Project Director Laura Welcher recently took part in a segment on The History Channel’s Life After People series.

In an episode titled “Crypt of Civilization,” Laura discusses the Rosetta Disk and The 10,000 Year Clock.   

The central question of the series is “How long would it last?” The series explores various materials, systems and structures built by humans to determine their durability sans maintenance as well as natural systems and how they might flourish or decline without human intervention.

“Crypt of Civilization” focuses on time capsules, vaults and other attempts to create long-lasting caches of materials or data.  Laura explores some of the unique challenges in designing artifacts like the Disk and Clock to last thousands of years while the show’s producers vividly illustrate them.

You can watch the series on its website (though the “Crypt of Civilization” episode isn’t available yet).

Dedicated to bringing together video documentation of the daily lives of disparate global citizens, the Global Lives Project celebrates the opening of its first installation on February 26th at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.  This opening is sponsored in part by the Long Now Foundation through a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

The Global Lives Project’s World Premiere installation will be on view at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from February 26 – June 20, 2010! The exhibit is part of an artist residency that will evolve over four months. We will be showing, for the first time ever, our series of ten 24-hour videos of daily life from around the planet.

Join Global Lives, Long Now and the YBCA for the opening night celebration on February 26th from 7:30pm to 11:30pm.  There will be a cash bar and music from San Franciscans Kid Kameleon, Chief Boima, and Tinker.  Global Lives producers and directors will be there to discuss the project.

The event is free, but you’ll want to RSVP so you can be sure to get in!