Your future as a black hole

One reason lots of people don’t want to think long term these days is because technology keeps accelerating so rapidly, we assume the world will become unrecognizable in a few years and then move on to unimaginable. Long-term thinking must be either impossible or irrelevant.

The commonest. . .   Read More

Maps and time

DAVID RUMSEY’s spectacularly illustrated lecture, “Mapping Time” is not just about maps. It is the future of data and knowledge handling. People literally gasp at the things Rumsey shows can be done.

I love it when techies, artists, and historians all gasp at the same time. That happened with David Rumsey. . .   Read More

Mega gardening

Big as life and twice as opinionated, the renowned preservation biologist DANIEL JANZEN spoke for The Long Now on Friday, April 9, 2005. His perspective on preservation may be jarring to some: “It’s ALL Gardening”.

DAN JANZEN is most widely known for his heroic efforts helping set all of Costa Rica on. . .   Read More

Asteroid threat report

Schweickart filled the hall with some 240 at the Presidio Officers Club and gave a dazzling lecture. He left the next day for Washington DC to lobby Congress to apply its will to making the Earth safe for the very long term.

“For life to survive in planetary systems,” said Schweickart, “it. . .   Read More

Long-term Policy Analysis

Dewar is head of RAND’s Pardee Center on very long-term policy—35 to 200 years

For over half a century the RAND Corporation has influenced national policy and invented major intellectual tools. Packet switching (Paul Baran) came from RAND; so did scenario planning (Herman Kahn); so does the current. . .   Read More

Long-term thinking about large-scale computing

Ever since his 1997 breakthrough book, DARWIN AMONG THE MACHINES, Dyson has become regarded as a leading historian and interpreter of computer science, bringing a rigorous and unconventional perspective. Thus his willingness to examine the long-term prospects for mega-scale computing. Most computer people are averse to. . .   Read More

The art of the really long view

For such a weighty subject there was a lot of guffawing going on in the Seminar Thursday night.

The topic was “The Art of the Really Long View.” Peter Schwartz chatted through his slides for tonight’s lecture, then the discussion waded in. Present were Danny Hillis, Leighton. . .   Read More

The Long Now

Brian told the origins of his realizations about the “small here” versus the “big here” and the “short now” versus the “long now.” He noted that the Big Here is pretty well popularized now, with exotic restaurants everywhere, “world” music, globalization, and routine photos of the whole earth. Instant world news and. . .   Read More