Long Views: The Long Now Blog » “Long Shorts” http://blog.longnow.org The Official Weblog of The Long Now Foundation and Friends Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:17:57 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 A Short History of the Modern Calendar http://blog.longnow.org/2012/02/03/a-short-history-of-the-modern-calendar/ http://blog.longnow.org/2012/02/03/a-short-history-of-the-modern-calendar/#comments Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:34:10 +0000 Austin Brown http://blog.longnow.org/?p=6111 Keeping time, it turns out, is a messy business. In order to satisfy science, religion, and sometimes ego, our calendar has changed quite a bit throughout history. This video by Jeremiah Warren tells the story up to now.

Since we can’t predict what changes might be made in the future, the 10,000 Year Clock has been designed to keep track of the cycles of the Sun, the Moon, the planets and the constellations – things even the largest of egos will have trouble changing.

]]> http://blog.longnow.org/2012/02/03/a-short-history-of-the-modern-calendar/feed/ 3 100 Years in 10 Minutes http://blog.longnow.org/2011/12/31/100-years-in-10-minutes/ http://blog.longnow.org/2011/12/31/100-years-in-10-minutes/#comments Sat, 31 Dec 2011 21:35:09 +0000 Alexander Rose - Twitter: @zander http://blog.longnow.org/?p=5958

Happy new year to all…

derDon1234 created a compilation featuring some of the important events of the last 100 years (2911-1011) in 10 minutes.

via Laughing Squid,  The Awesomer, BuzzFeed & MPViral.com

]]> http://blog.longnow.org/2011/12/31/100-years-in-10-minutes/feed/ 6 New York Times Lapse http://blog.longnow.org/2011/08/05/new-york-times-lapse/ http://blog.longnow.org/2011/08/05/new-york-times-lapse/#comments Fri, 05 Aug 2011 20:42:20 +0000 Austin Brown http://blog.longnow.org/?p=5413 Phillip Mendonça-Vieira captured the front page of the website of the New York Times every few hours from September 2010 to July 2011 and made a video of all those images. As far as historical documents go, it’s a hypnotic view into a particular period of time.

On what we might learn from this he says:

Having worked with and developed on a number of content management systems I can tell you that as a rule of thumb no one is storing their frontpage layout data. It’s all gone, and once newspapers shutter their physical distribution operations I get this feeling that we’re no longer going to have a comprehensive archive of how our news-sources of note looked on a daily basis. Archive.orgcomes close, but there are too many gaps to my liking.

This, in my humble opinion, is a tragedy because in many ways our frontpages are summaries of our perspectives and our preconceptions. They store what we thought was important, in a way that is easy and quick to parse and extremely valuable for any future generations wishing to study our time period.

He also did one for the BBC!

]]> http://blog.longnow.org/2011/08/05/new-york-times-lapse/feed/ 0 La Chaussettologie http://blog.longnow.org/2011/07/01/la-chaussettologie/ http://blog.longnow.org/2011/07/01/la-chaussettologie/#comments Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:36:47 +0000 Austin Brown http://blog.longnow.org/?p=5171 La Chaussettologie is a short film created by Yann Benedi & Celine Desrumaux for an event called Challenge Your World. La Chaussettologie translates roughly, I’m told, to Sock-ology.

It was the Long Short for Peter Kareiva’s SALT called Conservation in the Real World.

]]> http://blog.longnow.org/2011/07/01/la-chaussettologie/feed/ 0 Manhattan in motion http://blog.longnow.org/2011/06/03/manhattan-in-motion/ http://blog.longnow.org/2011/06/03/manhattan-in-motion/#comments Fri, 03 Jun 2011 22:52:39 +0000 Austin Brown http://blog.longnow.org/?p=5001 Here’s a beautiful time-lapse of a pulsing, breathing, flowing superorganism:

Mindrelic – Manhattan in motion from Mindrelic on Vimeo.

(via stellar)

]]> http://blog.longnow.org/2011/06/03/manhattan-in-motion/feed/ 0 The Hourglass http://blog.longnow.org/2011/05/03/the-hourglass/ http://blog.longnow.org/2011/05/03/the-hourglass/#comments Tue, 03 May 2011 22:29:40 +0000 Alex Mensing http://blog.longnow.org/?p=5085 This video documents Australian designer Marc Newson’s (Ikepod) modern take on the hourglass in the Glaskeller factory at Basel, Switzerland. It was directed by Philip Andelman and was featured as part of our “Long Shorts” series of short films that convey long term thinking. This Long Short was screened at Tim Flannery’s “Here On Earth” SALT.

The Hourglass from Ikepod on Vimeo.

]]> http://blog.longnow.org/2011/05/03/the-hourglass/feed/ 1 San Francisco to Paris in Two Minutes http://blog.longnow.org/2011/04/13/san-francisco-to-paris-in-two-minutes/ http://blog.longnow.org/2011/04/13/san-francisco-to-paris-in-two-minutes/#comments Wed, 13 Apr 2011 22:09:04 +0000 Alex Mensing http://blog.longnow.org/?p=5083 This timelapse of a flight between San Francisco and Paris was created by Beep Show, and is composed of photographs taken roughly every two miles of the entire journey. It was featured as part of our “Long Short” series of short films that convey long term thinking. This Long Short was screened at Ian Morris’ “Why the West Rules – For Now” SALT.

SF to Paris in Two Minutes from Beep Show on Vimeo.

]]> http://blog.longnow.org/2011/04/13/san-francisco-to-paris-in-two-minutes/feed/ 0 Dynamic Wikihistory http://blog.longnow.org/2011/03/24/wikihistory/ http://blog.longnow.org/2011/03/24/wikihistory/#comments Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:47:36 +0000 Alexander Rose - Twitter: @zander http://blog.longnow.org/?p=4369

A History of the World in 100 Seconds from Gareth Lloyd on Vimeo.

Thanks to Long Now research fellow Stuart Candy for sending this in:

Many wikipedia articles have coordinates. Many have references to historic events. Me (@godawful) and Tom Martin (@heychinaski) cross referenced the two to create a dynamic visualization of Wikipedia’s view of world history. Watch as empires fall, wars break out and continents are discovered.

This won “Best Visualization” at Matt Patterson’s History Hackday in January, 2011. To make it, we parsed an xml dump of all wikipedia articles (30Gb) and pulled out 424,000 articles with coordinates and 35,000 references to events. Cross referencing these produced 15,500 events with locations. Then we mapped them over time.

More information and datasets: ragtag.info/​2011/​feb/​2/​history-world-100-seconds/

]]> http://blog.longnow.org/2011/03/24/wikihistory/feed/ 3 Mountain Light http://blog.longnow.org/2010/11/15/mountain-light/ http://blog.longnow.org/2010/11/15/mountain-light/#comments Mon, 15 Nov 2010 23:32:20 +0000 Alex Mensing http://blog.longnow.org/?p=5094 This timelapse is from the film TimeScapes, by the photographer Tom Lowe. It includes shots of bristlecone pine trees, which can live for nearly 5,000 years. It was featured as part of our “Long Shorts” series of short films that convey long term thinking. This Long Short was screened at Rachel Sussman’s “The World’s Oldest Living Organisms” SALT.

Timescapes Timelapse: Mountain Light from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

]]> http://blog.longnow.org/2010/11/15/mountain-light/feed/ 0 Words http://blog.longnow.org/2010/10/26/words/ http://blog.longnow.org/2010/10/26/words/#comments Tue, 26 Oct 2010 22:29:00 +0000 Alex Mensing http://blog.longnow.org/?p=5081 This video, which uses words and meaning to stitch together a series of otherwise unrelated shots, was created by Everynone in collaboration with WNYC’s Radiolab and National Public Radio. It was shown as part of our “Long Short” series of short films that convey long term thinking. This Long Short was screened at Lera Boroditsky’s “How Language Shapes Thought” SALT.

WORDS from Everynone on Vimeo.

]]> http://blog.longnow.org/2010/10/26/words/feed/ 0 1945-1998 http://blog.longnow.org/2010/09/21/1945-1998/ http://blog.longnow.org/2010/09/21/1945-1998/#comments Tue, 21 Sep 2010 22:27:57 +0000 Alex Mensing http://blog.longnow.org/?p=5076 This video, created by Isao Hashimoto in 2003, fast forwards through the years 1945 to 1998 at the rate of one month per second, depicting each of the 2053 nuclear weapons tests that occurred during that time. It was shown as part of our “Long Shorts” series of short films that convey long term thinking. This Long Short was screened at Richard Rhodes’ “Twilight of the Bombs” SALT.

]]> http://blog.longnow.org/2010/09/21/1945-1998/feed/ 1 The Secret Powers of Time http://blog.longnow.org/2010/08/03/the-secret-powers-of-time/ http://blog.longnow.org/2010/08/03/the-secret-powers-of-time/#comments Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:40:33 +0000 Alexander Rose - Twitter: @zander http://blog.longnow.org/?p=2965

Philip Zimbardo’s talk on the Secret Powers of Time wonderfully illustrated in pseudo-realtime by RSA animate. (found via caterina.net)

]]> http://blog.longnow.org/2010/08/03/the-secret-powers-of-time/feed/ 3 PIXELS http://blog.longnow.org/2010/07/27/pixels/ http://blog.longnow.org/2010/07/27/pixels/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:27:14 +0000 Alex Mensing http://blog.longnow.org/?p=5074 PIXELS was written and directed by Patrick Jean and produced by One More Production, It was featured as part of our “Long Short” series of short films that convey long term thinking. This Long Short was screened at Jesse Schell’s “Visions of the Gamepocalypse” SALT.

PIXELS by Patrick Jean from ONE MORE PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

]]> http://blog.longnow.org/2010/07/27/pixels/feed/ 0 Blu’s Stop-Motion History of Life http://blog.longnow.org/2010/07/19/blus-stop-motion-history-of-life/ http://blog.longnow.org/2010/07/19/blus-stop-motion-history-of-life/#comments Mon, 19 Jul 2010 10:29:18 +0000 Austin Brown http://blog.longnow.org/?p=2746 “Long Shorts” – short films that exemplify long-term thinking.  Please submit yours in the comments section…

Not only does this amazing stop-motion film document a huge swath of history (all of it, really) – it looks like it took a huge swath of history to make.  Thousands of photographs of graffiti evolving and interacting with its environment depict the development of life in the universe to create “Big Bang Big Boom: an unscientific point of view on the beginning and evolution of life… and how it could probably end.”

BIG BANG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

If this theme piques your interest, by the way, you might want to check out one of our upcoming Seminars About Long-term Thinking featuring Martin Rees: “Life’s Future in the Cosmos.”

]]> http://blog.longnow.org/2010/07/19/blus-stop-motion-history-of-life/feed/ 1 The woman that programmed the first computer http://blog.longnow.org/2010/06/17/the-woman-that-programmed-the-first-computer/ http://blog.longnow.org/2010/06/17/the-woman-that-programmed-the-first-computer/#comments Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:57:38 +0000 Alexander Rose - Twitter: @zander http://blog.longnow.org/?p=2449 “Long Shorts” – short films that exemplify long-term thinking.  Please submit yours in the comments section…

Information Pioneers: Ada Lovelace from Information Pioneers on Vimeo.

This is a nice intro to Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer who wrote programs for Babbage’s mechanical computer. While this computer is similar to the binary mechanical computer used in the first 10,000 Year Clock prototype, Babbage’s computers are decimal based.

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