This is a map of North America. It was made by a Dutch map maker by the name of Herman Moll, working in London in 01701. I bought it on Portobello Road for about 60 pounds back in 01981. . . .   Read More

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.  I want to lead you through some of the research that I’ve been doing on a meta-level around long-lived institutions, as well as some observations of the ways various systems have lasted for hundreds of thousands of years.  Long . . .   Read More

When I started working with Stewart Brand over two decades ago, he told me about the ideas behind Long Now, and how we might build the seed for a very long-lived institution. . .   Read More

Members of Long Now London chalking the White Horse of Uffington, a 3000-year-old prehistoric hill figure in England. Photo by Peter Landers. Imagine, if you will, that you could travel back in time three thousand years to the late Bronze Age, with a bird’s eye view of a hill near . . .   Read More

The Sagrada Familia Catholic Church in Barcelona, Spain. The Catholic Church is one of the longest-lived institutions in human history.

The Long Now Foundation was founded in 01996 with the idea to build a 10,000 year clock — an icon to long-term thinking that might inspire people to engage more deeply with. . .   Read More

Executive Director Alexander Rose recently sat down with John Brockman of Edge.org to discuss Long Now. (Brockman recently gave a talk at Long Now in February about A.I.).
There are almost no artifacts that have been built for very long periods of time. With things like the pyramids or Stonehenge—we knew the. . .   Read More

In the hours after news broke that the Cathedral of Notre Dame suffered extensive fire damage, many found hope in a story that circulated on social media about a centuries-old protocol the fire department in Paris followed when battling the fire. The story originated with Twitter. . .   Read More

A new paper by archaeologists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo addresses one of the longstanding mysteries of the monuments of Easter Island: their location.

Four hundred of the statues, known as muai, are located miles away from where they were originally quarried, and sit on megalithic platforms, or ahu. An analysis of the locations of. . .   Read More

On the western flank of the Hoover Dam stands a little-understood monument, commissioned by the US Bureau of Reclamation when construction of the dam began in 01931. The most noticeable parts of this corner of the dam, now known as Monument Plaza, are the massive winged bronze sculptures and central flagpole which are often. . .   Read More

From National Geographic comes a video profiling the durable windmills of Nashtifan, Iran. These windmills constructed over a thousand years ago out of clay, straw and wood are not only still standing; they work just as well as they did when they were first built.

In designing and building the Clock of the Long Now. . .   Read More