At the beginning of each year, John Brockman’s Edge poses a question to a long list (192 this year!) of thinkers and authors. The ensuing onslaught of insight is then published for us all to enjoy. This year he asks:

What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?
Scientists’ greatest pleasure comes from. . .   Read More

Long Now Research Fellow Stuart Candy brought to our attention this visualization, which shows projections of what sorts of technologies will be available in the future, how soon, and how important they will be. It was created by London-based designer Michell Zappa, who leads a ‘technological trend bureau’ called Envisioning Technology. Their website explains that […]

Below is the Clock Project update by Jeff Bezos published at http://www.10000yearclock.net
Quick Update and Video of the Raise Bore Milestone

We just completed the 12½ foot diameter, 500 foot deep vertical shaft for the 10,000 Year Clock. We used a mining technique called raise boring. Take a look at. . .   Read More

Public Funding for Public Elections
A Summary by Kevin Kelly

Larry Lessig gave a rousing performance for the 100th Seminar About Long-Term Thinking. In a lawyerly fashion he laid out evidence of a new type of corruption that is disrupting the American republic, and he offered a remedy for that corruption. Lessig has a. . .   Read More

Presumably the programmers at Phillips weren’t imagining this sort of patient.
Long Now Board Member David Eagleman recently had a very unusual visitor at his lab. At three thousand years of age, this is by far the oldest person Eagleman has ever put through a scanner. Neshkons is an Egyptian mummy, exhumed from Luxor. . .   Read More

Advances in computing technology have led to increasingly powerful devices – a cell phone can now do what early desktop computers did not even approximate. But these developments have largely been in the form of devices, objects made of silicon and plastic. Stanford bioengineering professor Drew Endy imagines, in a New York Times article, another frontier. . .   Read More