Published on August 3rd, 02010 by Tyler Emerson
Quotes related to long-term thinking. A new series. Have a favorite quote? Share it with us in comments.
“Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. We have broadened the circle of those we love. We have now organized what are modestly described as super-powers, which include groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together – surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.”
– Carl Sagan
Published on August 3rd, 02010 by Alexander Rose - Twitter: @zander
Philip Zimbardo’s talk on the Secret Powers of Time wonderfully illustrated in pseudo-realtime by RSA animate. (found via caterina.net)
Published on July 29th, 02010 by Austin Brown
During his Seminar, Jesse Schell recommended a number of books and other resources that have informed his conception of the Gamepocalypse. Here’s a list of the books for the curious:
He also mentioned a movie called Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel, a website called Couch to 5K, and plenty of other fascinating things. Oh, he’s on twitter too: @jesseschell
Published on July 29th, 02010 by Contessa Trujillo
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 Jesse Schell’s “Visions of the Gamepocalypse” (downloads tab)
Published on July 28th, 02010 by Stewart Brand
Gaming the World
In a glee-filled evening, Schell declared that games and real life are reaching out to each other with such force that we might come to a condition of “gamepocalypse—where every second of your life you’re playing a game in some way. He expects smart toothbrushes and buses that give us good-behavior points, and eye-tracking sensors that reward us for noticing ads, and subtle tests that confirm whether product placement in our dreams has worked.
The reason games are so inviting is that they offer: clear feedback, a sense of progress, the possibility of success, mental and physical exercise, a chance to satisfy curiosity, a chance to solve problems, and a great feeling of freedom.
Accelerating technology has made some people give up on predicting the future, Schell said, but in fact it should make us much better predictors, because we get so much practice in finding out so quickly whether our predictions are right or wrong….
Read the rest of Stewart Brand’s Summary
Published on July 28th, 02010 by Alexander Rose - Twitter: @zander
Jeff Rothenberg once said “Digital information lasts forever – or five years, whichever comes first.” This is basis of an interesting debate between New York Times writer Jeffrey Rosen who recently published “The End of Forgetting,” and Scott Rosenberg’s rebuttal on his blog. (Excerpt from Rosenberg below)
But Rosen is too busy hatching plans for “expire dates” on social-network postings and other artificial-forgetting schemes to give his head the Janus-turn his subject demands. The idea that the Web has a long memory is hardly new (here’s J.D. Lasica’s piece on how “The Web Never Forgets” from 1998). But there is a flipside to this notion: Information online can be fragile and fleeting, as well. There is an entropic quality to everything that is shared online. Data gets lost; servers die; databases are corrupted; formats fall into disuse; storage media deteriorate; backups fail.
Rosen’s piece along with new projects such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s HTTPS Everywhere project are reactions to a feeling that we are losing privacy in the digital age. These reactions have an unfortunate side effect however – if we encrypt or auto delete our data, we will lose it forever.
Privacy and security concerns generally have a short half life. While you might not want your drunk college photos to be a part of a future employers decision making criteria, you will certainly lament losing all your chilhood photos by the time you are 60. If we lost the treasure trove of human to human interactions that is now being recorded on the web it would truly be a tragedy. Imagine how much more we would know about ancient Rome, Egypt, or the Mayan culture if we could sift through their Facebook logs…
Published on July 27th, 02010 by Kirk Citron
The Long News: stories that might still matter fifty, or a hundred, or ten thousand years from now.
At a recent Long Now seminar, Ed Moses mentioned in passing that we now produce enough bullets each year to kill every person on the planet — twice. We are a violent species; we hunt, we organize in gangs, we go to war. Today the U.S. is prosecuting two wars, and there are hotspots around the world from Darfur to Mexico.
At the same time, global defense spending is rising by 8% a year. We face unquantifiable threats from nuclear, biological, and robot weapons. And, of course, there will almost certainly be new conflicts over food, water, and other resources.
And yet –
Over the long term, it’s possible that war may actually be on the decline. The UN defines a “major war” as an armed conflict which causes more than 1,000 violent deaths a year. Just ten years ago, the world had fifteen major ongoing wars. Today there are seven.
In fact, Steven Pinker has argued that if you’re a young man (the group most likely to bear the burden of soldiering), your chances of dying in an armed conflict are lower than at any time in history: “If the wars of the twentieth century had killed the same proportion of the population that die in the wars of a typical tribal society, there would have been two billion deaths, not 100 million.” His essay is a few years old, but it’s worth reading if you haven’t seen it before: A history of violence.
Here are some other recent news stories and opinion pieces about the future of war (somewhat U.S.-centric, as the U.S. accounts for nearly half of global military spending, and most “advances” are taking place here):
1. Money and the military:
2. Ironically, even as we eliminate nuclear warheads:
3. High-tech combat:
4. War, what is it good for:
We invite you to submit Long News story suggestions here.
Published on July 25th, 02010 by Alexander Rose - Twitter: @zander
Radoslav Zilinsky’s 2007 artwork “The World”
A stunning painting of a possible future (or present depending on how you look at it)… walled cities of techno-utopia surrounded by the rest of the world living in the middle ages. Here is a link to the large version on Zilinzky’s site. (Found via Coolvibe.)
Published on July 22nd, 02010 by Contessa Trujillo
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 Frank Gavin’s “Five Ways to Use History Well”
Published on July 22nd, 02010 by Tyler Emerson
Quotes related to long-term thinking. A new series. Have a favorite quote? Share it with us in comments.
“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
– Stanislaw Lec
Ideas about Long-term Thinking.
The Long Now Foundation
Fostering Long-term Responsibility
est. 01996.
Subscribe in a reader