The point is to explore whatever may be helpful for thinking, understanding, and acting responsibly over long periods of time.

- The Long Now Foundation

The Long Now Foundation – established in the year 01996 to develop Clock and Library projects , as well as to become the seed of a very long-term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and promote “slower/better” thinking.

Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed-some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where ‘long-term’ is measured at least in centuries. Long Now proposes both a mechanism and a myth.

Website is an extensive home and includes blog, seminars about long term thinking, site list of server, photo, human language, and long term prediction projects, and much more.

Link to source

More information:

• TED (video): “Stewart Brand on the Long Now” (Nov. 2008).
• Digital Souls: “The Big Here and Long Now” (by Brian Eno).
  
• CBC: “Full Interview: Ed Burtynsky on 10,000 year old photos” (Sept. 09, 2008).  Describes introduction to the Clock of the Long Now, and future contributions to the gallery of the long now.  You can click on the link above to listen to the CBC podcast, or listen below.

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