Much like ants, termites are a testament to the adage that a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A single termite is an almost translucent creature, no more than a few millimeters long. But put several thousand of them together, and they become capable of building expansive structures, some reaching up as […]

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

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. . .   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

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. . .   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

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. . .   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