When cretaceous-age rocks in the Southern US eroded over millions of years, they produced a uniquely rich, fertile soil that landowners realized was ideal for growing cash crops such as cotton. It was the soil from these rocks that slaves toiled over in the era of American slavery—and the same ground that . . .   Read More

Sónar seeks to bridge the worlds of art and technology, the popular and the avant garde, and club culture and cyberculture . . .   Read More

Author Neal Stephenson discusses the controversial ending to Game of Thrones and why endings are generally so hard to nail in works of fiction.

From the Neal Stephenson Conversation at the Interval, “Fall, or Dodge in Hell.” Watch the full video here. . .   Read More

A new piece in BBC’s Deep Civilisation series explores the role of art in long-term thinking. The piece is authored by founders of a new organization, The Long Time Project, whose mission is to “[stretch] our capacity to care about the long-term so that we take responsibility for it in the short. . .   Read More

Taking a question from the audience, author Ian McEwan says that we’ll know we’ve achieved complete trust with lifelike machines once we stop asking them, “Are you real?”

From the Long Now Seminar, “Machines Like Me” by Ian McEwan. . .   Read More

Nautilus interviews Cesar A. Hidalgo, Director of the Collective Learning group at the MIT Media Lab, on how people and products become forgotten by culture. . .   Read More

The late Larry Harvey, founder of Burning Man, on what makes the festival so unique. From Larry Harvey’s 02014 Long Now Seminar “Why The Man Keeps Burning,” which you can watch in full here. . .   Read More

In the 02010s, the animated GIF, for better or worse, took hold as the visual language of internet culture. The ubiquity and increased power of mobile devices enabled users to share animations with ease. And share they did. In 02016, the GIF-sharing site Giphy revealed that its 100 million daily active users sent 1. . .   Read More

Science author Steven Johnson discusses the legacy of “Spacewar!”, one of the earliest and most influential computer games. Johnson explores this story and more in his latest book, “Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World” (02016). This clip is from the Q&A with Stewart Brand, who wrote a Rolling Stone article on the. . .   Read More

Alan Moore (left) chose comedian Stewart Lee as the recipient of his Longplayer letter.

In January 02017, Iain Sinclair, a writer and filmmaker whose recent work focuses on the psychogeography of London, wrote a letter to writer Alan Moore as part of the Artangel Longplayer Letters series. The series is a relay-style correspondence, with. . .   Read More