For the past few years Chris Hibbert has been working on Zócalo, an Open Source Toolkit for Prediction Markets. He writes, “my purpose in the project is to build prediction market software that people can use as a foundation for deploying many markets of this type. As I said in my proposal to CommerceNet, the […]

Danielle here at Long Now sent me this interesting BBC piece on how a group at the University of Wisconsin – Madison is looking at mechanical computing at the nano scale in order to avoid the thermal limits being approached in CMOS circuitry.

They claim to be inspired by Babbage’s decimal computing tech. It makes. . .   Read More

 
I was once again reminded of Dan Bricklin’s excellent piece on long term software and thought it was worth a mention here.  His basic point is that a governments software, should be as lasting and shared as its other civil infrastructure.  The article does a great job of showing the perils of entrusting all. . .   Read More

Democracy versus Culture

Francis Fukuyama began by describing the four most significant challenges to the thesis in his famed 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. In the book he proposed that humanity’s economic progress over the past 10,000 years was driven by the accumulation of science and technology over. . .   Read More

This is the first working prototype of the Orrery, or planetary display for the 10,000 Year Clock. This prototype was just recently re-installed at our San Francisco Museum & Store. This part of the clock might help future visitors understand other parts of the clock by accurately showing the positions of the human. . .   Read More

Long Now recently completed this prototype of the Solar Synchronizer for the 10,000 Year Clock, and it is now on display at our San Francisco Museum & Store. This mechanism will help the Clock keep accurate time over the millennia. While the Clock’s day to day time-keeper is a slow pendulum, a. . .   Read More

This has nothing whatsoever to do with Long Shorts (videos, generally short ones, that exemplify long term thinking or longer perspective) at all.

In the Long Now Shop we carry a variety of DVDs that have something to do with long term thinking, or inspire us the same way the clock does. One of these. . .   Read More

Someday in the future our trouble with our current systems of networking and wireless and routers and protocols and software will seem as charming and obvious as… well as charmingly obvious as the hassles medieval monks may have had with the first books, if you can believe this cool video. It’s a glorious send. . .   Read More

We arrived at Maker Faire early on Saturday morning, ready to display and demonstrate several parts of the 10,000 Year Clock to the anticipated 40,000 attendees – and with our table located at one of the main entrances, we were soon surrounded! The Clock mechanisms and Danny Hillis’ blueprints received a lot of attention. . .   Read More

Forwarded to me by Stewart Brand is an amazing article from Archaology Magazine on the construction of the Great Pyramids. After analyzing a 25 year old micro-gravimetric study that showed a spiraling sub structure, it was determined that the pyramids were built with a spiraling ramp as part of the internal structure.

A microgravimetry. . .   Read More