We rarely see in full the cities that we live in. Focused on our daily lives, urban dwellers are often only dimly aware of the numerous, enmeshed layers of critical infrastructure that quietly hum in the background to make modern life possible.
Come and explore the amazing stories and surprising histories to be found lurking. . .   Read More

Writing for Aeon Magazine, Colin Dickey, visited the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and discusses the apocalyptic rhetoric often associated with the project. He points out that apocalyptic thinking, while sometimes an effective motivator, can be a barrier to long-term thinking.
This obsession with impending disaster suggests that we see nature on a particularly human. . .   Read More

Long Now Executive Director Alexander Rose, also the Project Manager for the 10,000-Year Clock, collects inspiring examples (or in some cases, failures) of long-term thinking, architecture and design. In a talk called Millennial Precedent, he discussed some of these examples and the lessons he draws from them. Among them is a Japanese. . .   Read More

Towers that reach 15 kilometers into the sky and autonomous 3D-printing robots on the Moon aren’t just great fodder for sci-fi; they’re also plausible enough to be considered as audacious, but realistic engineering goals. That sweet spot is exactly what the Hieroglyph project is aiming for. A collaboration between Arizona State. . .   Read More

When a devastating flood destroyed much of the southwestern Netherlands in 01953, its government decided it was time for action. Over the next few decades, the nation poured research and financial resources into the construction of the Deltawerken, a massive network of dams and storm barriers that now protects the country’s lowest lying provinces. . .   Read More

In far North-Eastern India, the power of nature is not a limitation, but a resource. This video offers a glimpse at an old tradition, but one that’s very much alive – in more ways than one!

A form of “sustainable, living architecture that will live and grow for generations,” these living bridges are a. . .   Read More

Sometimes technology fails – but luckily, collective memory can step in to lend a hand.

In a recent LA Times article, José Holguín-Veras writes about an old legend that saved a small island community in Japan from perishing in the tsunami that followed the earthquake of March 02011. The quake had toppled their tsunami. . .   Read More

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is an underground repository located at 78 degrees North latitude that currently stores nearly a million seed samples to preserve crop diversity for the future. Many see the vault as a resource for a “doomsday” scenario brought on by severe climate change or other ecological disaster. Long Now has been. . .   Read More

While many Japanese towns were completely destroyed by the tsunami in March, several escaped potentially dire fates. Some villages were warned of the dangers of building too close to water by tablets and monoliths erected in the wakes of previous disasters.

According to this AP story, the village of Fudai took a technological brute-force. . .   Read More

There was a maxim that predicted the existence of the longest living trees even before they were discovered, “adversity breeds longevity.”  Using this principle conifer scientists traveled to the harshest mountain peaks and found the Brisltecone Pine alive and over 4,800 years old.

It stands to reason then that a country that had spent. . .   Read More