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.

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).

]]> http://blog.longnow.org/2010/02/04/rosetta-and-long-now-on-life-after-people/feed/ 0 http://blog.longnow.org/2010/02/04/global-lives-project-opening-celebration/ http://blog.longnow.org/2010/02/04/global-lives-project-opening-celebration/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:35:53 +0000 Austin Brown http://blog.longnow.org/?p=1602

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 installation is sponsored 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!

As you may remember, Longplayer is a project by Jem Finer: a composition designed to last 1,000 years.  Along with a live performance of portions of the composition last year, a Long Conversation was held that lasted for 12 hours:

In parallel with a live performance in the Roundhouse’s Main Space, the Artangel Longplayer 2009 Conversation took place in the Studio Theatre. Writer Jeanette Winterson began and ended the 12-hour talking marathon of twenty leading writers, filmmakers, scientists, academics and technology activists, inspired by the philosophical implications of long time.

MP3 audio of that conversation is now available.

Those of you in the general vicinity of Berlin should check out the next round of the Long Conversation at the Transmediale Futurity Now! Festival on February 5th.  The following evening (Feb. 6th) will feature presentations by Bruce Sterling and our very own Alexander Rose on the topic of Atemporality.

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 Wade Davis’ “The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World”

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

presents Alan Weisman on “World Without Us, World With Us

Wednesday February 24, 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:
Journalist Weisman traveled the world to investigate what happens when humans stop occupying an area. How long do our artifacts last? How does nature recover? What does that say about the human impact on the world? What would be the actual sequence of events if all of humanity suddenly disappeared?

Robert Fogel writes in Foreign Policy this month:

In 2040, the Chinese economy will reach $123 trillion, or nearly three times the economic output of the entire globe in 2000… Although it will not have overtaken the United States in per capita wealth, according to my forecasts, China’s share of global GDP — 40 percent — will dwarf that of the United States (14 percent) and the European Union (5 percent) 30 years from now.

If we’re considering the long term future, it may seem parochial to worry about which nation is “ahead” — but the world will  be a different place if China is the country setting the global agenda for everything from climate change and the exploration of outer space to human rights and censorship (go Google!). China is rising; is the rest of the world ready?

Some recent news stories about China:

1. Last year, China passed the U.S. in carbon emissions. Not only that:
China overtakes Germany to become largest exporter
China overtakes U.S. as world’s biggest car market
China consumers to overtake U.S. in a decade

2. They’re making great strides in technology:
Nuclear power expansion in China stirs concerns
Gene rice on its way in China
China’s high-speed-rail revolution
China unveils anti-missile test
China energy efficiency “improves in first half”

3. And science:
China ascendant
Get ready for China’s domination of science

4. As the dustup with Google shows, China approaches social issues differently:
China’s says web crackdown to be “long-lasting”
China to be short 24 million wives
In China, DNA tests on kids ID genetic gifts, careers

We invite you to submit Long News story suggestions here.

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.

Listen to the Audio of Wade Davis’ “The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World” (downloads tab)

Native guidance

What does it mean to be human and alive?

The thousands of different cultures and languages on Earth have compellingly different answers to that question. “We are a wildly imaginative and creative species,” Davis declared, and then proved it with his accounts and photographs of humanity plumbing the soul of culture, of psyche, and of landscape.

He began with Polynesians, the wayfinders who mastered the Pacific ocean in the world’s largest diaspora. Without writing or chronometers they learned 220 stars by name…

Read the rest of Stewart Brand’s Summary

Great piece in the Washington Post on the future of ancient books in Timbuktu.

“A sort of ancient-book fever has gripped Timbuktu in recent years” as outsiders encounter large, family-owned collections of ancient manuscripts which remain in private hands. at the same time, Timbuktu’s residents “hope to lure the world to a place known as the end of the Earth by establishing libraries for visitors to see their centuries-old collections of manuscripts.”  For those who do not sell their collections privately, small libraries are in bloom across the city.

Yet with instructions from ancestors to preserve ancient books within families, there is a reluctance to place them in libraries currently being built for the very same purpose. “Many owners refuse to part with their books… but they struggle to raise funds to restore or display them.”

It is interesting that that so many families were able to preserve these manuscripts for so long.  What caused this culture of long term preservation?

Consider the Library of Alexandria, which Stewart Brand covers in Clock of the Long Now. It experienced at least four fires, two from “collateral damage” by Ptolemy VIII (88 B.C.E) and Julius Caesar (47 B.C.E.), and two from religions on the rise (Christianity and Islam).

The ability to preserve these books over many centuries so far rests with families intent on honoring and adhering to requests from ancestors, a rather small and fragile model compared to the infrastructure needed to build a great library. Yet it is possible that a family with instructions from ancestors is, in some sense, a better library than a library itself.

Six hundred years ago, Timbuktu was packed with university students (at about 25,000, the size of a modestly large mid-western university these days) and a constant flow of merchants. It was a nexus of trade and intellectual life on the continent which then slowed. Perhaps because it did not intersect with the dramatic tension between three continents, like Alexandria, it was less prone both to collateral damage *and* the request by military or religious leaders to dispose of books not relevant to the prevailing winds. In any case, this slowing may well have ensured greater preservation over time.

It’s also confirmation that a library in the middle of a continent–away from the intersection of countries, military conquests and ascendant religious movements–is a really good idea.    With “ancient-book fever” now in Timbuktu, some combination of library and family models will have to preserve them.

John Brockman’s Edge has posted the responses from its members to their Annual Question.  This year they wanted to know, “How is the internet changing the way you think?”

There are over 160 short essays from members of ‘The Third Culture,’ or “those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.”

There are quite a few Long Now Foundation Board Members that have contributed as well as plenty of SALT speakers, past and present.  Here’s a list with links to their thoughts on how the internet is changing their thoughts:

Long Now Foundation Board Members:

• Danny Hillis
• Stewart Brand
• Kevin Kelly
• Brian Eno
• Esther Dyson
• Peter Schwartz
• Paul Saffo

Long Now Seminar Speakers:

• Clay Shirky
• Nicholas Nassim Taleb
• George Dyson
• Sam Harris
• Peter Diamandis
• Daniel Everett
• Juan Enriquez
• David Eagleman (scheduled for 4/1/10)

Ross Shulman sent in this great post by (one of my favorite) current science fiction writers Charles Stross about how you might design a generational starship to handle the vast distances and time involved in space travel.  Excellent read.  (excerpt below)

If you can crank yourself up to 1% of light-speed, alpha centauri is more than four and a half centuries away at cruising speed. To put it in perspective, that’s the same span of time that separates us from the Conquistadores and the Reformation; it’s twice the lifespan of the United States of America.

We humans are really bad at designing institutions that outlast the life expectancy of a single human being. The average democratically elected administration lasts 3-8 years; public corporations last 30 years; the Leninist project lasted 70 years (and went off the rails after a decade). The Catholic Church, the Japanese monarchy, and a few other institutions have lasted more than a millennium, but they’re all almost unrecognizably different. More here…

Below I also include an image to give some perspective to the distances we would have to cover.  It comes from another good piece about escaping earth in a few billion years when the sun dies (via the National Superconducting Cyclotron Lab).

The distances we are talking about

This year there are several Long Bets and Predictions up for adjudication.  We will be contacting these bettors this year to ask them to make a self assessment of the bet, if the parties cannot come to an agreement we will make a determination.  Some wont be decided officially until the end of the year, but we may have passed the tipping point on some of these already.

We welcome your input as comments on this thread…
A profitable video-on-demand service aimed at consumers will offer 10,000 titles to 5 million subscribers by 2010.

The U.S Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Statistics (www.bts.gov) will report a lower number of total highway vehicle miles traveled in 2010 than in 2005.

Predictions:  While we dont officially make adjudications on predictions, they are posted for the world the judge.  Tell us what you think.

By 2010 more than 50 percent of books worldwide will be read on digital devices rather than in print form.

Within 5 years all power plants will be converted to full-spectrum laser-fired—all oil/gas/coal/nuclear power plants will be obsolete and retired.

Within the next 5 years, Google employees will become dissatisfied, and kick-start a new wave of new technology and prosperity in Silicon Valley.

The world will not reach ‘Peak Oil’ by 2010.

There will be a quantum computer with over 100 qubits of processing capability sold either as a hardware system or whose use is made available as a commercial service by Dec 31, 2010

By 2010, the use of dial-up modems will represent less than 5 percent of all Internet access (represented as a percentage of all households) in the United States.

The U.S. will not pull all of its troops out of Iraq until the 10 largest corporations in the U.S. use their influence to make it happen. I don’t see this as a possibility until after Nov. 9, 2010 the next mid-term elections.

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 Sander van der Leeuw’s “The Archaeology of Innovation”

Watch the video of Rick Prelinger’s “Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 4 “

A little while ago Clock designer and Long Now founder Danny Hillis came across this podcasted radio show by former president Thomas Jefferson.  We were all surprised to find him giving radio broadcasts given he passed away in 01826 (on the 4th of July I might add).  But what was most surprising was to find that one of his episodes discussed the Clock of the Long Now (Listen to the MP3).  Danny listened with great interest as Jefferson discussed our project, clocks and time in general, and decided to send in a letter.  And just the other day Jefferson discussed the letter at length on the show (Listen to that MP3).  As you would expect, Jefferson has an encyclopedic knowledge of new and old world technology, clocks and mechanica.  It makes for fun listening, happy holidays.