Published on Tuesday, July 13th, 02010 by Stewart Brand
History-savvy Policy
Why do policy makers and historians shun each other? Gavin observed that policy people want actionable information, certainty, and simple explanations. Meanwhile historians revel in nuance, distrust simple explanations and also distrust power and those who seek it. Thus historians keep themselves irrelevant, and policy makers keep their process ignorant.
Gavin proposed five key concepts from history that can inform understanding and improve policy dramatically…
About this Seminar:
President of the Royal Society, England’s Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees brings a lifetime of cosmological inquiry to a crucial question: What if human success on Earth determines life’s success in the universe?
He thinks that civilization’s chances of getting out of this century intact are about 50-50. He is hopeful that extraterrestrial life already exists, but there’s no sign of it yet. But even if we are now alone, he notes that we may not even be the halfway stage of evolution. There is huge scope for post-human evolution, so that “it will not be humans who watch the sun’s demise, 6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.”
Appropriately, Rees’s Long Now talk will be at the Chabot Space & Science Center in the hills above Oakland, in the planetarium.
• Twitter- up to the minute info on tickets and events
• Long Now Blog – daily updates on events and ideas
• Facebook – stay in touch through our fan page
• Long Now Meetups- join one or start your own
Wikimania is a conference for users of the wiki projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Topics of presentations and discussions include Wikimedia Foundation projects, other wikis, open source software, and free content.
Attendance is €15 per day, or €40 for all three days and you can register here.
If you have questions, you can contact Wikimania directly through this page.
Published on Friday, July 2nd, 02010 by Contessa Trujillo
Atlas Obscura, “a compendium of the world’s wonders, curiosities and esoterica” in collaboration with Long Now has created a new category just for us called Long Now Locations.
The Long Now Locations serve as a compendium and ongoing collection of objects and places that exhibit long-term thinking, intended or not. Along with the character of Atlas Obscura, many of the Long Now Locations are also mysterious and curious in nature.
Ranging from items that were created with a long-term mindset and intention, as were the Oak Beams at New College Oxford, to items that accidentally survived and now serve as long-term examples, telling a story and giving important information regarding past civilizations and their knowledge and capabilities, like the Antikythera Mechanism.
We encourage Long Now supporters to explore the Long Now Locations collection and add your own experiences with places and items of long-term nature, and maybe even some examples of poor long-term thought or planning. Sign up with an Atlas Obscura to start contributing your stories.
Obscura Day 02010
In addition to Long Now Locations, on Saturday March 20 02010, Long Now collaborated with Atlas Obscura on the first, of what we hope will be many an Obscura Day. Taking part in a day of 80 events, expeditions, back-room tours and hidden treasures in 20 countries worldwide, Long Now’s Museum & Store opened our doors to over 80 Obscura Day explorers for an evening of merry-making and conversation around the Long Now and the 10,000 Year Clock.
After exploring the Musee Mechanique alongside owner Dan Zelinsky, the San Francisco Obscura Day party roved down along the historic Aquatic Park and over into Fort Mason where an after-party was held at the Long Now Museum & Store to close Obscura Day’s world-wide events and festivities.
Long Now and Atlas Obscura staff and guests gathered to mingle around prototypes of the 10,000 Year Clock of the Long Now. Amongst the Orrery, Chime Generator, and Tungsten Bobs. Alexander Rose, Executive Director of Long Now and Project Manager/Designer of the 10,000 Year Clock, gave an introduction to the clocks various prototypes. Clock engineers, Greg Staples and Paolo Salvagione were also in attendance to answer questions and give demonstrations of the various prototypes.
Here is a wonderful video and summary on the day from Atlas Obscura:
The day started with folks hiking out to an abandoned railroad tunnel Australia to see bioluminescent glow worms, and ended some 30 hours later with San Francisco obscuraphiles watching an amazing demonstration of parts of the 10,000-Year Clock at the Long Now Foundation. In between, we walked the lost River Fleet in London, visited amazing anatomical museums in Paris, Washington, Boston, and Philadelphia, toured the world’s largest treehouse in Tennessee, circumnavigated one of the largest holes in the world in Butte, made shiny mud balls in Albuquerque, and photographed an unbuilt suburb in the Mojave desert.
Want to be updated on future Atlas Obscura events and tours? Sign up here.
About this Seminar:
Games perpetually revolutionize computer use toward denser interaction with the human mind. To do that, they perpetually revolutionize themselves. Understanding the next frontiers of the genre is one way to understand where society is going.
• Twitter- up to the minute info on tickets and events
• Long Now Blog – daily updates on events and ideas
• Facebook – stay in touch through our fan page
• Long Now Meetups- join one or start your own
Published on Tuesday, June 29th, 02010 by Contessa Trujillo
The opening of SFMOMA Artist’s Gallery’s new show, Wondrous Strange: A 21st Century Cabinet of Curiosities is the impetus for an evening to explore ideas about time though art, whimsy, music and mechanics.
Artwork (from left to right) by Jo Ann Biagini, Sharon Beals and Michele Muennig
From 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on July 22, 02010 join Long Now and the SFMOMA Artist’s Gallery as we open both venues and close off the adjoining street to delve deep into the Wunderkammer installation in the Gallery, the 10,000 Year Clock prototypes at Long Now and the Golden Mean, aka the Snail Car. There will be prizes for the best costumes so gather your time traveler gear – think late 18th through the early 20th century – and head our way! Musical accompaniment will be provided by punk band “The Grannies” and entertainment by the Burley Sisters burlesqueteers.
Its title derived from a line in Midsummer Night’s Dream, the show looks at the wondrous and the strange as propellants for the imagination of the viewer. Featuring works by more than a dozen Bay Area artists and including photography, sculpture, and painting, the exhibition explores themes such as evolutionary biology and history, progress and decadence, and the carnal and the intellectual. This contemporary version of the Cabinet of Curiosities provides a rich environment for the work of these 21st century artists who strive to reconnect us to the sources of wonder.
Published on Friday, June 25th, 02010 by Austin Brown
Long Now’s Executive Director Alexander Rose will be presenting a live webinar on StimulusTV.com. The broadcast is hosted by Steven Latham and will last about 30 minutes. Registration is free and open to the public.
What will happen in the next 10,000 years?
Tuesday, June 29th, 02010
4:00 – 4:30 pm PST StimulusTV.com
After its initial public appearance at this year’s Maker Faire followed by an evening at the Exploratorium, the escapement, circular pendulum and Clock face were installed at our Long Now Museum and Store at Fort Mason Center and can be viewed seven days a week – just check our website first for our hours.
About the escapement, circular pendulum and Clock face:
This pendulum and escapement represent a snapshot of our development process in timekeeping for the monument size clock. The dials in the center are non-functioning in this model and were used as a visual mock-up for a scaled up version. The function of the escapement is to both drive the pendulum and transfer the regular beat of the pendulum to the timekeeping elements of the Clock. This allows the Clock’s stored energy to ‘escape’ at a regular rate, thus advancing the drivetrain and displays in a manner that allows them to keep time.
This particular pendulum and escapement system is unique in several ways, one of which is likely obvious at a glance. The large ring around the face is actually a pendulum suspended on a specially designed flexure. With most pendulums, the weight is completely below the point of rotation and the distance between the two is what determines the period (the time between ticks). The ring configuration in this pendulum adds weight above the point of rotation, which causes it to swing more slowly than it would otherwise; the period is 10 seconds. By reducing the number of ticks the Clock will go through, the rate of wear can also be reduced.
The second unique element of this mechanism is in the small gear system above the pendulum; the escapement itself. Danny Hillis explains:
One problem with clock escapements is that there is normally some variability in the drive torque of the escape wheel, which can lead to variability in the energy applied to the pendulum. This can in turn lead to inaccuracies in the clock’s ability to keep steady time. One method of reducing this variability is delivering the impulse to the pendulum indirectly through an intermediate energy storage device that delivers a more constant impulse. For example, in a typical gravity escapement, the torque from the escape wheel is used to lift a weight to a fixed height, and the dropping of that weight delivers the impulse. This isolates the strength of the impulse from the torque applied to the escapement, but it does not solve the problem entirely, because the energy that must be removed from the pendulum to release the escape wheel may still depend on the torque applied to the escapement.
The two-phase detached escapement solves this problem by releasing the escapement wheel utilizing the residual energy of the falling gravity arm’s weight. This happens after the gravity arm has delivered its impulse to the pendulum. Because the interaction with the escape wheel only happens after the escapement has delivered its impulse, the escape wheel cannot affect intensity of the impulse. In the first phase, the pendulum releases the gravity arm, which is decoupled from the escapement and the falling gravity arm impulses the pendulum. In the second phase the gravity arm continues to fall until it becomes totally detached from the pendulum, and then the falling gravity arm releases the escape wheel, which restores the gravity arm to the initial position and the escape wheel continues rotating until it is no longer in contact with the gravity arm.
At the center of the pendulum is a prototype for the Clock’s face. Rather than hours and minutes, the face displays information about the movement of the sun, stars and moon. The outer ring is shows the movement of the sun; it rotates once per day, passing horizon indicators that show sunset and sunrise. Those horizon indicators change along with the seasons to show the progressive lengthening and shortening of days. The next ring into the center reveals the current phase of the moon and it will rotate along with the lunar cycle; all 32 phases of the moon are shown by this ring.
The center of the face shows the stars of the night sky. The face is intersected by six arcs collectively known as the rete. The wide arcs represent the horizon, so that above them the stars that can be seen at a given time are visible. Stars below those arcs will not be currently visible as they’re blocked by the planet you’re standing on. The four arcs that terminate near the center point towards the celestial north pole, the point around which we observe the stars rotating. Polaris is currently the closest star to that point, which is why we call it the North Star, but as the earth’s axis precesses, Vega will move closer to that position and become our “North Star” in about 13,000 years. On the Clock’s face, the rete rotates along with the earth to show the daily movement of the stars. To account for the axial precession, the black surface with the stars on it will turn around in a 26,000 year-long rotation.
Published on Thursday, June 17th, 02010 by Danielle Engelman
Imminent fusion power
All the light we see from the sky, Moses pointed out, comes from fusion power burning hydrogen, the commonest element in the universe—3/4 of all mass. A byproduct of the cosmic fusion is the star-stuff that we and the Earth are made of.
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