It started with a seed planted in the mind of Scottish artist Katie Paterson when she made the connection between tree rings and chapters of books. Now several years in the making, Paterson’s vision will unfold over the next century in her artwork Future Library–an ambitious and evolving piece that will outlive Paterson and most […]

For most living organisms, 60,000 generations is an extensive amount of time. Go back that many human generations, or about 1,500,000 years, and there are fossils suggesting Homo erectus were widespread in East and Southeast Asia at that time. Even for the fruit flies, which geneticists have studied for over a century. . .   Read More

The oldest living things in the world are a record and celebration of the past, a call to action in the present, and a barometer of our future, writes artist and SALT speaker Rachel Sussman in The Oldest Living Things in the World.

When Rachel spoke for Long Now in 02010 her book on organisms. . .   Read More

In 01985, Andy Warhol used an Amiga 1000 personal computer and the GraphiCraft software to create a series of digital works. Warhol’s early computer artworks are now viewable after 30 years of dormancy.
Commodore International commissioned Warhol to appear at the product launch and produce a few public pieces showing off the Amiga’s. . .   Read More

Long Now Member Maria Popova is the mastermind behind the popular cultural blog of ideas known as Brain Pickings.  The blog was founded in 02006, where she has been reviewing books, writing multiple blog entries and tweeting 50 times a day, all while balancing on a wobble board. The lifelong bibliophile has also written for. . .   Read More

Continuing our series of posts highlighting books suggested for our Manual for Civilization library at The Interval, today we have a specialized list selected by Violet Blue.  As a library designed to help sustain or rebuild civilization, one of the first categories that came to mind were sexuality and reproduction.  A civilization cannot have a. . .   Read More

Science fiction author Hugh Howey donated to the Manual for Civilization a one-off hard cover set of his Silo Saga with a special title page for The Long Now Foundation.

The dystopian science fiction series developed out of a single novella Hugh Howey self-published on the Web in 02011.  He continued the story. . .   Read More

Photo: Antarctic Heritage Trust (NZ)
A small box of 22 exposed but unprocessed photographic negatives left nearly a century  ago in an Antarctic exploration hut has been discovered and conserved by New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust.

“It’s the first example that I’m aware of, of undeveloped negatives from a century ago from. . .   Read More

In 02008 Kevin Kelly called for movage (as opposed to storage) as the only way to archive digital information:

“Proper movage means transferring the material to current platforms on a regular basis— that is, before the old platform completely dies, and it becomes hard to do. This movic rythym of refreshing content should be as. . .   Read More

“The Internet echoes with the empty spaces where data used to be.”
– Alexis Rossi from the Wayback Machine

The Internet Archive recently unveiled a new plan to fix broken links utilizing the Wayback Machine.
The Wayback Machine provides digital captures of URLs to create stable access to websites that otherwise might vanish. The service initially. . .   Read More