The Long Now Foundation
San Francisco, CA
Jan 11th, 2008
As part of The Long Now Foundation's Seminars About Long-term Thinking, technology forecaster and strategist Paul Saffo presents Embracing Uncertainty: The Secret to Effective Forecasting.
Long Now Foundation
San Francisco, CA
Jun 28th, 2007
The End Of History Revisited with Francis Fukuyama speaking at a seminar hosted by The Long Now Foundation.
Frank Fukuyama's 1992 book "The End of History and the Last Man" had profound and lasting impact with its declaration that science and technology, the growing global economy, and liberal democracy are leading history in a quite different direction than Marx and Hegel imagined. In this revisit to those themes, Fukuyama examines conflict with and within Islam, the need for a diffuse form of global governance to deal with problems like climate change, and the deeper implications of biotechnology.
The Long Now Foundation
Cowell Theater - San Francisco, CA
Mar 10th, 2006
The Next 100 Years of Science: Long-term Trends in the Scientific Method with Kevin Kelly.
The co-founding editor of "Wired" magazine and author of "Out of Control" is working on a new book on "what technology wants." His research led to the first-ever history of scientific methodology. Starting from this long-term view of science's past transformation, he speculates on how the practice of science will change in the future.
Laura Welcher, director of The Rosetta Project at The Long Now Foundation presents a poster on a distributed archive model in a session titled "Metadata in Language Documentation and Description" at the Linguistic Society of America annual meeting, Pittsburgh, January 9, 02011.
Introduction to the idea and goals of the Human Language Record-a-thon, a project to engage the world in helping document the nearly 7,000 languages spoken on Planet Earth. The Human Language Record-a-thon was held as an all-day workshop at the Internet Archive on July 30, 02011, and was simulcast to remote participants around the world. Presented by Laura Welcher, Director of the Rosetta Project at The Long Now Foundation.
How many of today's headlines will matter in 100 years? 1000? Kirk Citron's "Long News" project collects stories that not only matter today, but will resonate for decades -- even centuries -- to come. At TED2010, he highlights recent headlines with the potential to shape our future.
Rosetta Project linguists and archivists demonstrate the Rosetta Disk and collection of language documentation at The Long Now Foundation's booth at Maker Faire.
The Long Now Foundation
San Francisco, CA
May 21st, 2008
Quadir presented a broad outline of development in order to give context for his belief that technology can alleviate poverty.
He reminded us that 500 years ago, when the western countries were still "developing" their own societies, their political systems were no better, and often worse, than the instable corrupt regimes of many developing countries today.
England had a series of kings who were impeached, arrested, ousted, or beheaded for their crimes. It was only after citizens were empowered by economic markets did the balance of power shift from the central king to decentralized citizens.
The Long Now Foundation
San Francisco, CA
Feb 25th, 2008
Joining 3.5 Billion Years of Microbial Invention featuring biologist J. Craig Venter.
Biologist, author and businessman Craig Venter discusses his work mapping and synthesizing genomes. Venter recalls his work mapping the human genome and expands on his current work which includes categorizing new genes and species of microbes from ocean water. Venter also explains how microbial research can be used for metabolic engineering and alternative energy sources.
How many of today's headlines will matter in 100 years? 1000? Kirk Citron's "Long News" project collects stories that not only matter today, but will resonate for decades -- even centuries -- to come. At TED2010, he highlights recent headlines with the potential to shape our future.
Long Now Foundation
San Francisco, CA
Sep 12th, 2008
Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, speaks at the Long Now Foundation about the history of the X Prize.
The goal of the 10 million dollar prize is to benefit humanity and Diamandis details some of the effects of this generous prize.
The Long Now Foundation
Cowell Theater - San Francisco, CA
Feb 13th, 2006
Perfect Order: A Thousand Years in Bali
With lucid exposition and gorgeous graphics, anthropologist Stephen Lansing exposed the hidden structure and profound health of the traditional Balinese rice growing practices. The intensely productive terraced rice paddies of Bali are a thousand years old. So are the democratic subaks (irrigation cooperatives) that manage them, and so is the water temple system that links the subaks in a nested hierarchy.
The Long Now Foundation
The YBCA Forum (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts) - San Francisco, CA
Sep 22nd, 2006
China Thinks Long-term, But Can It Relearn to Act Long-term?
China is the most unresolved nation of consequence in the world," Orville Schell began. It is defined by its massive contradictions.
The Long Now Foundation
San Francisco, CA
Apr 28th, 2008
Niall Ferguson and Peter Schwartz present Historian vs. Futurist on Human Progress as part of The Long Now Foundation's Seminars about Long-term Thinking.
The Long Now Foundtion
San Francisco, CA
Feb 4th, 2008
The Future Has Always Been Crazier Than We Thought with Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses his book, The Black Swan in relation to predicting the future, learning from the consequences of the unknown, and the power of randomness.
In a dazzling duet Will Wright and Brian Eno give an intense clinic on the joys and techniques of "generative" creation.
Back in the 1970s both speakers got hooked by cellular automata such as Conway's "Game of Life," where just a few simple rules could unleash profoundly unpredictable and infinitely varied dynamic patterns. Cellular automata were the secret ingredient of Wright's genre-busting computer game "SimCity" in 1989. Eno was additionally inspired by Steve Reich's "It's Gonna Rain," in which two identical 1.8 second tape loops beat against each other out of phase for a riveting 20 minutes. That idea led to Eno's "Music for Airports" (1978), and the genre he named "ambient music" was born.
This video was made at the first Human Language Record-a-thon, held on July 30, 02011 at the Internet Archive. The video describes how to make a Language Record-a-thon video and how to upload it to the Rosetta Project Archive. Presented by Laura Welcher, Director of the Rosetta Project at The Long Now Foundation.
Stewart Brand works on the Clock of the Long Now, a timepiece that counts down the next 10,000 years. It's a beautiful project that asks us to think about the far, far future. Here, he discusses a tricky side problem with the Clock: Where can we put it?