Long Now is a non-profit organization fostering long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.
San Francisco, CA
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Challenges that feel impossible to tackle within a single human lifetime become conceivable when you have a longer timescale to work with.
Today is a day to take the long view.
Join our community of long-term thinking, 02026 is going to be a good one. na2.hubs.ly/H02frJ50
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“The goal is not to acquire, but to become.” Lovely life advice in an essay from Long Now cofounder @kevin2kelly : kevinkelly.substack.com/p/a-…
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Long Now Foundation retweeted
Xerox, if they still existed, would be even more upset by what I've written recently about another PARC project. It will be part of the next volume of my MAINTENANCE book. It is online now, here:
books.worksinprogress.co/boo…
Xerox headquarters was so upset about what I wrote about Xerox PARC in the scurrilous Rolling Stone that they forbade me from reprinting the piece in my book. I said no to that. Well, they pleaded, don't name us. Okay, I said. In the book, I refer to their company as the Shy Corporation.
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Thrilled to preview our 02027 spring season of Long Now Talks. This lineup of pioneers, scientists, and scholars features solar geoengineering researcher @DakotaGruener, economist @MazzucatoM, bioengineer and neuroscientist @SKonermann, and planetary scientist @minwadhwa.
Long Now members get two complimentary tickets to all these Talks, plus access to after-party receptions at The Interval, happy hours, and livestreams with a vibrant, worldwide community of long-term thinkers. Now is a great time to join: na2.hubs.ly/H0807SB0
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The team at Cradle of English has launched Guildhall in 3D, which captures eight centuries of architectural history through high-fidelity spatial scanning.
Their digital preservation projects are diving deep into the history of key locations in London: cradleofenglish.com/experien…
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Long Now Foundation retweeted
Playing long term with long term people at the Interval at the @longnow
Challenges that feel impossible to tackle within a single human lifetime become conceivable when you have a longer timescale to work with.
Today is a day to take the long view.
Join our community of long-term thinking, 02026 is going to be a good one. na2.hubs.ly/H02frJ50
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You can tell how seriously a bar takes its drinks by how it selects and describes the non-alcoholic ones
e.g. nobody sources koshihikari rice for a drink with no alcohol in it unless they care about everything else too
The Interval @ Long Now in San Francisco ⤵
ALT The Interval at Long Now's Temperance menu: five non-alcoholic cocktails ($9-16) including Asimov's Crater and Bitter Orange Old Fashioned, each with a full tasting note, plus N/A cider and beers.
Some of the longest-lived institutions have a surprising thing in common: they serve drinks. Weihenstephan has been brewing beer in Bavaria since 01040. Sudo Honke has been making sake in Japan since 01141. This is, in large part, why we made Long Now headquarters into a bar.
Look overhead at The Interval and instead of a chandelier, you'll see our twinkling Bottle Keep. It follows the Japanese tradition of keeping a personal bottle at the bar for your next visit. Custom-made by Adams & Chittenden Scientific Glass, these globes hold St. George single malt whiskey and gin distilled with juniper berries foraged on our Nevada Bristlecone Preserve.
A huge thanks to our Bottle Keep members and donors, you all made The Interval renovation possible back in 02014. (There’s still room on the ceiling to add more bottles, if you like: na2.hubs.ly/H07Xqzg0)
We love that leaving a bottle behind is like a small bet, a wager that you’ll return soon.
More info about the space, and how to visit us here: na2.hubs.ly/H07Xqzk0
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Some of the longest-lived institutions have a surprising thing in common: they serve drinks. Weihenstephan has been brewing beer in Bavaria since 01040. Sudo Honke has been making sake in Japan since 01141. This is, in large part, why we made Long Now headquarters into a bar.
Look overhead at The Interval and instead of a chandelier, you'll see our twinkling Bottle Keep. It follows the Japanese tradition of keeping a personal bottle at the bar for your next visit. Custom-made by Adams & Chittenden Scientific Glass, these globes hold St. George single malt whiskey and gin distilled with juniper berries foraged on our Nevada Bristlecone Preserve.
A huge thanks to our Bottle Keep members and donors, you all made The Interval renovation possible back in 02014. (There’s still room on the ceiling to add more bottles, if you like: na2.hubs.ly/H07Xqzg0)
We love that leaving a bottle behind is like a small bet, a wager that you’ll return soon.
More info about the space, and how to visit us here: na2.hubs.ly/H07Xqzk0
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In an office in Helsinki, a systems analyst named Risto spends his weekdays modeling where radioactive particles might travel through bedrock tens of thousands of years from now. He works on the Safety Case for Finland’s Olkiluoto repository, which will bury the country’s spent nuclear fuel 400 meters down in granite.
@vincent_ialenti spent 32 months among the experts forecasting glaciers, earthquakes and ecosystems a hundred thousand years out, fully aware they might be wrong.
“Assembling multiple, flawed future scenarios always trumped the darkness of envisioning zero.”
It’s a story hauntingly analogous with today’s conversations around forecasting and pacing technology. Read it here on Long Now Ideas: na2.hubs.ly/H07V_jR0
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Did you know you can watch “How Buildings Learn,” the classic six-part BBC series (01997) completely free on YouTube? Scored by Brian Eno and based on Stewart Brand’s book of the same title, the series illustrates Brand’s thesis that buildings are living systems, evolving and changing over time.
Essential for any fan of architecture and Long Now lore. Find all the episodes here: na2.hubs.ly/H07xNq60
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John Cage’s Organ² / ASLSP will play uninterrupted for 639 years. The performance requires successive generations willing to maintain both the instrument and the art form. Filmmakers @patshen and @brandonvedder are creating the documentary Film¹/ASAP showcasing the life of Halberstadt Organ²’s aging caretaker.
The first installment is due in 02027; the last is meant to arrive after the organ falls silent in the year 02640.
Learn more about the film project in Shen's essay on Long Now Ideas: na2.hubs.ly/H07Sjvg0
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Our Elders of Time documentary has been named an official selection at five film festivals and counting. This docu-short follows the journey of artists, scientists, and horologists as they create Centuries of the Bristlecone, a monumental artwork from mastermind @JonathonKeats.
Don’t miss the opportunity to see this film at our upcoming event. In-person tickets are sold out, but please join us on the livestream from anywhere in the world: na2.hubs.ly/H07S42v0
Watch the trailer here: na2.hubs.ly/H07S41F0
More screening opportunities announcing soon, stay tuned.
Poster art by Casey Cripe.
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Life thrives through 𝘤𝘰𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, not dominance. On Oct 22, join us for “On Interdependence” a conversation between Google VP @blaiseaguera (author of 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐𝘴 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦?) and @baratunde (host of Life with Machines and How to Citizen). They’ll explore how AI symbiosis and Indigenous principles shape our collective survival over the next 10,000 years.
More information and tickets here: longnow.org/talks/02026-thur…
The most momentous shift in our understanding of the universe arguably predated Copernicus. The breakthrough wasn't moving the origin of the coordinate system from the Earth to the Sun, but the radical 6th century BCE idea that Earth floats in space like other celestial bodies.
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Long Now members get two complimentary tickets to events like this. Not a member? Join us: longnow.org/join/
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Come take a personal tour of the The Interval exhibits this Thursday, Sep 17.
Danielle Engelman, Long Now Community & Collections Director, will give the backstory on the Orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system, our cross-section of a 5,000-year-old bristlecone pine, the micro-etched disk of the Rosetta human language project — and much more. Plus, a personal Q&A with artist Casey Cripe in front of his monumental canvas on the south wall.
Fort Mason Art throws open the doors all over campus, and there’s so much to see. Find the whole line up here: na2.hubs.ly/H07N3t_0
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A map drawn in 01587 sat folded inside an atlas for four centuries before anyone saw it whole.
In 02017, Long Now Board member and map collector David Rumsey acquired these pieces to digitize and stitch them into a single planisphere nine feet across. Four hundred and thirty years after cartographer Urbano Monte imagined it, the map was whole again.
Read the story on Long Now Ideas:
na2.hubs.ly/H07J4Dv0
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The Long Now Foundation is searching for our next Executive Director. For nearly 30 years, Long Now has fostered long-term thinking in the framework of the next 10,000 years. As we look toward our next chapter, we're seeking a leader who can build on this strong foundation: deepening our programs, strengthening our financial future, and continuing to grow Long Now as a home for long-term thinkers and builders everywhere. The search is officially open. If this resonates, we encourage you to apply — or send it to someone who comes to mind.
More information and application link here: na2.hubs.ly/H07LCHH0
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Don’t miss an evening exploring art and science of the bristlecones. Long Now Research Fellow Anne Heggli presents her decade of scientific findings, alongside artist Jonathon Keats and dendrochronologist Adam Csank. Plus, a screening of our award-winning making-of documentary Elders of Time.
In-person tickets are sold out, but please join us on the livestream Tue, Sep 29: na2.hubs.ly/H07H-ZB0
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When the Laki fissure erupted in 01783 in Iceland, a witness wrote that the earth “swelled up, with a chorus of howls… like a rabid animal rips something to bits.” Gases decimated the crops, killed over half the country’s cattle and three quarters of its horses and sheep, and the famine that followed took a fifth of Iceland’s population. Icelanders call it Móðuharðindin — the famine of the mist.
Johanna Hoffman describes how this volcanic violence forged a new identity and collective myth that has cohered Icelanders ever since.
In a world full of environmental changes and natural disasters, the Icelandic example is useful for all of us living on unsteady ground. We need new stories for the changing world ahead of us: stories that center resilience & adaptation rather than fear. longnow.org/ideas/02022/09/2…
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