Long Now

because they haven’t been mentioned: stewart brand’s book, the clock of the long now[0] and the long now foundation[1] tackle the same problem. excellent exposition that doesn’t necessarily transmit despair amidst the shortening attention span. i think the thrust of the message is towards the end of the book where he talks about infinite games, and the finite games that can be played interim. it appears we need to think like game designers, after all. [0]: https://longnow.org/store/clock-long-now-time-and-responsibility-stewa… [1]: https://longnow.org/

Probably due to this: https://longnow.org/ Personally I think it's a harmless but also not useful affectation (but I also think our chances of making it into the 10,000s as anything still using equivalent dates are slim at best).

Even if it takes 200 years it is likely still worthwhile. Unfortunately we, as a culture, have a problem seeing and planning across generations. https://longnow.org/

Good documentary about Steward Brand, the author of Whole Earth Catalog: https://www.weareasgods.film/ He also founded The Long Now. Come to a talk if you’re in SF — they’re great. https://longnow.org/ https://theinterval.org/

Stewart Brand is a phenom. Not mentioned in this article but he started The Long Now Foundation (http://longnow.org/) to "foster long term thinking". I've been a member for over a year and their seminars are absolutely fantastic.

The wide-ranging podcasts/lectures hosted through the Long Now Foundation (http://longnow.org/) are certainly worth exploring... And nobody mentioned Cheap Astronomy yet (http://www.cheapastro.com) . Go for the physics and astronomy, stay for the great accent...

Shameless proxy brag: I volunteer for the Long Now Foundation. [1] One of their amazing efforts is the Rosetta Project [2], a set of parallel texts and linguistic resources so that future civilizations will be able to decode anything written today. The ESA put one of the Rosetta Project disks on the space probe [3], so a bunch of information about our languages is now way the hell out there. You can think of it as very long term backup. [4] I'm really happy for the Long Now folks today. As an aside, I strongly recommend their series of talks. It's one of my favorite nerd events in SF, and members can stream them live. The old talks are also available via podcast. [1] http://longnow.org/ [2] http://rosettaproject.org/ [3] http://blog.longnow.org/02013/12/16/wake-up-rosetta/ [4] http://blog.longnow.org/02008/08/20/very-long-term-backup/

I don't think it is surprising most billionaire do not pursue this kind of greatness. They just aren't different from other guys. There, the few who go and try to climb mount Everest "because it's there" or who try and row the pacific are rare, too. Secondly, if half the billionaires were to do the same outlandish things, we wouldn't call them outlandish. For example, there probably was a time when quite a few billionaires went elephant hunting. Then, that was not outlandish. Now, it would be. Now, I think there are plenty of billionaires doing outlandish things, but just not in a highly visible technical direction. For example, Ted Turner started a world-wide news network, tried to start his own Olympic Games, and has a huge herd of bison. Others buy sports clubs, try to win the America's cup, or try to build a mechanical clock that will run for 10000 years (http://longnow.org/). Yet others see it as their goal to get higher on Forbes' list of billionaires (http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml) Another thing I am curious about: who are the one or two billionaires at the other end of that curve?

Then you're going to love learning that Feynman worked on them, specifically the inter-processor routing. https://longnow.org/ideas/richard-feynman-and-the-connection-machine/

Nice, ordered. For fans of computing history and/or Feynman, this article about his time with, and contributions to, Thinking Machines and the Connection Machine is a great read! https://longnow.org/ideas/richard-feynman-and-the-connection-machine/

This is great! Especially nice to hear as I'd been all to aware of the advice to not rewrite your whole codebase once you raise some money as that's an easy way to tank the company. As a result I have probably erred to much on the type of refactoring he compares this to. More recently I have been more aligned with the shredding approach. I think one of the reasons that it works that isn't mentioned here, is that often you only really know what's needed after finishing the first implementation and/or using it for a while. I'm also reminded me of the Japanese practice of rebuilding a temple every 20 years: https://longnow.org/ideas/long-term-building-in-japan/

Assume you already know about this given your interests, but just in case: https://longnow.org/

It's to showcase their superior thinking over four digit year neanderthals. A very iamverysmart thing, as if people don't know after the year 9999 there will be a 10000. Which is why I'll always prepend even more digits when replying, because I'm thinking even further ahead than the short-sighted five digit people and even bigger numbers all the time. https://longnow.org/

It's true that they say that: The Long Now Foundation uses five-digit dates, the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years. ~ https://longnow.org/about/ but the truth is more subtle, love it or hate it the five digits are part of a campaign to encourage people to think about humans in timescales a tad longer than a few decades at most.

Yeah, this is a kind of calling card of the Long Now Foundation. See their landing page: "established in 01996 to foster long-term thinking" https://longnow.org/

Excellent point. Longnow.org has a lot of material about the resilience of cities over very long time scales (like, millennia). Here’s an example on the resilience of cities versus corporations: https://longnow.org/seminars/02011/jul/25/why-cities-keep-growing-corp… Another example, from a longnow podcast, is the tendency of people to think of themselves as citizens of a particular city (I’m from San Francisco, I’m from Venice, I’m from Helsinki), perhaps even more so than a state/province or a nationality in some cases.

Fenyman worked with Thinking Machines on their first supercomputer, The Connection Machine in the 80s. Here's some great background and anecdotes from the founder, Danny Hillis: https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/

Five digit Gregorian years are a https://longnow.org/ thing, tho when a few millennia are not enough I prefer the holocene calendar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar

It's funny that Bruce Sterling described a similar kind of schism in one of his Long Now Talks ("The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole"), and said that one of the best ways to derail meaningful progress towards such a technological singularity would be to split the world into two warring, cultural cliques. https://longnow.org/seminars/02004/jun/11/the-singularity-your-future-… Also, hilariously, the other way to derail such progress would be to commercialize it. Runaway self-improvement for its own sake, after all, doesn't have an intrinsic business model.

For the curious, I strongly recommend this Long Now talk by Edward Slingerland: https://longnow.org/ideas/drinking-10000-years-intoxication-and-civili… In short: it's about why we continue to drink despite the obvious costs. There are, as it turns out, some non-obvious benefits as well.

Tangentially related, but I highly recommend Long Now seminars. The caliber of guests and the variety of topics are really, really good. https://longnow.org/seminars/

Btw, the chants from the book are real (and part of the interludes if you get the audiobook - which I recommend since the initially boring but ultimately important parts it aren't skippable without effort). https://soundcloud.com/ztutz/sets/iolet-music-from-the-world-of-anathe… The Thousander Chant is fun if you've got the right audio setup. https://longnow.org/store/iolet/ > In Neal Stephenson’s new novel Anathem, the Decanarian Erasmus’ daily chore is to ring the Clock bells in his “Math” in a special sequence each day as he chants out the sequence. Those sequences and chants are all based on mathematical formulae that composer and coder David Stutz has put together into an album called Iolet.

Where are you from and where do you live? My impression is the USA has the worst drinking culture. Many other places in the world have much better ones. UK pubs, Japanese izakayas. I had a pretty negative view of drinking growing up in the USA with MADD's messaging etc. Even though my parents drank socially it just seemed not worth. Then I moved abroad and my outlook changed Here's an interesting talk on some of the possible benefits to society of drinking https://longnow.org/ideas/drinking-10000-years-intoxication-and-civili… note: I am not suggesting you should go drink. Rather, I'm only passing on my experience. I didn't drink until I moved abroad in my mid 30s. I still generally don't drink in the USA but I've had some great times drinking abroad. I experienced those "benefits" outside the USA but rarely inside.

"02000" is a "long now" thing, not octal. Thinking about the next 10,000 years and ald that. https://longnow.org/

It’s an affectation relating to The Long Now. https://longnow.org/ It’s, as I understand it, to draw attention to the briefness of our lives and contextualize the decisions we make that have effects long beyond “now”. Personally, I think it’s kind of weird to base it upon the supposed birth year of a religious figure who may not have even lived, but standards are useful, I suppose.

I suspect some affiliation with https://longnow.org/, they're notorious for 5-digit years.

Historically, violence is at low levels: https://longnow.org/seminars/02012/oct/08/decline-violence/ > - classicism What's wrong with studying ancient Rome?

> We are going to recommend you for immediate hiring into the marketing department. I am reminded of this Feynman story: https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/

Somewhat related to /r/collapse and Doomsday Preppers is the Long Now[0] mentality. Yes, we're all going to die, but we can do things to ensure that we don't slip backwards into a long dark age. It was the Neal Stephenson novel Anathem[1], and perhaps before that Foundation[2] by Isaac Asimov, that first made me start thinking about those kind of things. It doesn't have to be exclusive, you can do things to help preserve knowledge at the same time as being self-sufficient. [0]: https://longnow.org/ [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(Asimov_novel)

I understand the interest in baseload generation but don't see why there's so much interest in nuclear when low-tech concentrated solar in the desert can get the job done and scaling it up (and ensuring it's 100% safe) isn't a matter of R&D but just basic manufacturing. It strikes me a lot of the nuclear focus is (understandable, if not justifiable) interest in cool new technology. Ironically, with concentrated solar, going lower tech, even at the expense of efficiency, might decrease costs because the materials would amount to cheap mirrors/collectors and steel pipes. Saul Griffith's classic talk highlighted that there's probably no meaningful manufacturing limit to building concentrated solar with existing industrial infrastructure: https://longnow.org/seminars/02009/jan/16/climate-change-recalculated/