In November, Long Now co-founder Stewart Brand wrote a letter to Long Now board member Esther Dyson as part of the Artangel Longplayer Letters series. The series is a relay-style correspondence: The first letter was written by Brian Eno to Taleb. Taleb then wrote to Stewart Brand, and Stewart wrote to Esther Dyson. . .   Read More

In 02007, political tensions were running high and the US was beginning to contemplate who would replace the second President Bush. Amid this polarized climate, Jason Galbraith predicted that,

Neither major U. S. political party will hold conventions or indeed primaries to select their 2012 Presidential nominees.

Unconvinced by Galbraith’s premonitions of anarchy, coups. . .   Read More

In December, the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Foresight Initiative hosted a conference entitled Global Trends 2030: US Leadership in a Post-Western World. Organized to coincide with the release of the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds report, the conference brought policy makers together with futurists to discuss the global “megatrends” that. . .   Read More

Former SALT speaker Philip Tetlock spoke with Edge recently about his research into forecasting. In 02005, he published Expert Political Judgement: How Good is it? How Can We Know?, for which he spent over a decade recording and assessing the predictions made by public policy experts. He found them to be not much better than. . .   Read More

NPR’s Robert Krulwich recently shared on his blog a fantastic stitching together of processes that operate on vastly different time scales: geology, economics and politics. It took the eye of a geologist – Steven Dutch – to recognize the deep-time significance of a narrow corridor of counties running through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and into the. . .   Read More

This lecture was presented as part of The Long Now Foundation’s monthly Seminars About Long-term Thinking.

If Mayors Ruled the World
Tuesday June 5, 02012 – San Francisco

Video is up on the Barber Seminar page for Members.
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Audio is up on the Barber Seminar page, or you can subscribe to our podcast. . .   Read More

“If Mayors Ruled the World”
Tuesday June 5, 02012 at the Cowell Theater, San Francisco

As the world congeals towards a single, globally interdependent economic and political system, being engaged as an individual can feel less and less meaningful. We’re told to “think globally, act locally,” but it can be very hard to imagine. . .   Read More

In a recent article on Slate, Long Now Board member Esther Dyson takes up the concept of Charter Cities – Paul Romer’s model for the creation of prospering, sustainable zones of urban life, about which he spoke at a 02009 SALT lecture. Dyson suggests that Romer’s business-model approach to the construction and functioning. . .   Read More

Policy-makers wrestling with foreign policy decisions that will have very long-lasting repercussions often turn to experts to inform them of the likely outcomes.

Through the lens of the current international dilemma over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, foreign policy historian (and former SALT speaker) Francis Gavin offers his thoughts on the relationship between policy. . .   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