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 shrine in the…  Read More

On July 20, 01969, humans landed on the surface of the moon for the first time. But since only two of us got to go, NASA sent a message “FROM PLANET EARTH” in the rest of humanity’s stead. The message wasn’t a letter written in ink and paper, though. It was a thin silicon disc,…  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 warning…  Read More

Long Now Executive Director and 10,000-year Clock Project Manager Alexander Rose will discuss the ongoing construction of the 10,000-year Clock in western Texas at the Chabot Space & Science Center Friday night, March 16th. He’s appearing at Chabot’s monthly Night School, where, students of life can explore, imagine, create and mingle in an incredibly inspiring…  Read More

WATCH Alexander Rose’s “Millennial Precedent” There is new media available from our monthly series, the Seminars About Long-term Thinking. Stewart Brand’s summaries and audio downloads or podcasts of the talks are free to the public; Long Now members can view HD video of the Seminars and comment on them.

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

CNN is running a story on the 100,000 year Finnish nuclear storage bunker.  I hope to see this at some point, I love it when people do projects that make our 10,000 year project seem short sighted… In Finland they believe they have found a [nuclear waste] solution, with the world’s first permanent nuclear-waste repository…  Read More

On January 2nd of 02007 Stewart Brand and I stepped into the cool deep past and unknown future of who begat who.

(picture: the granite genealogical vaults)

Since I began working on the 10,000 Year Clock project, and associated Library projects here at Long Now almost a decade ago, I have heard cryptic references. . .   Read More

This article was written by Peter Schwartz for Red Herring’s 02002 Scenarios issue. This is the original un-edited piece.

Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada is more a ridge than a mountain. It slowly rises from a height of four thousand feet to six thousand feet along its’ length of six miles. On February. . .   Read More

Stewart Brand and Danny Hillis visit Petra