Using the designing and building of the Clock of the Long Now as a framework, this is a book about the practical use of long time perspective: how to get it, how to use it, how to keep it in and out of sight. Here are the central questions it inspires: * How do we make long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare? * Discipline in thought allows freedom. One needs the space and reliability to predict continuity to have the confidence not to be afraid of revolutions * Taking the time to think of the future is more essential now than ever, as culture accelerates beyond its ability to be measured * Probable things are vastly outnumbered by countless near-impossible eventualities. Reality is statistically forced to be extraordinary; fiction is not allowed this freedom This is a potent book that combines the chronicling of fantastic technology with equally visionary philosophical inquiry.
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"How do we make long-term thinking automatic and common," asks Stewart Brand, "instead of difficult and rare?" Or, to put it another way, how does one get people to develop a natural perspective of their present moment that extends beyond a few days in either direction? The Clock of the Long Now describes a potential solution from the Long Now Foundation, a digerati braintrust co-chaired by Brand, the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog. The other chair, computer scientist Daniel Hillis, gave the group their initial premise in a 1995 Wired magazine article dreaming of a "Millennium Clock" that would measure time on a 10,000-year scale, and musician Brian Eno, who came up with the concept of the "Long Now." Although there is a lot of discussion of the clock itself--where to build it? how to design it?--Brand's main theme is about accepting responsibility for the long-term consequences of our actions. "We are not the culmination of history," he warns, "and we are not start-over revolutionaries; we are in the middle of civilisation's story ... We don't know what's coming. We do know we're in it together." The Clock of the Long Now is a deceptively short book, written in a friendly, at times conversational style. It can be read in an afternoon, but just might make you think for a lifetime. Maybe even a few lifetimes. --Ron Hogan, Amazon.com
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Publisher
How we have become dangerously short-term in our outlook
Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. This trend, which originates in the accelerating changes in technology, the short-term perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election priorities of democracies and the distractions of personal multi-tasking, is on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to short-sightedness is needed – some mechanism or myth that teaches us to take the long view and to accept our long-term responsibilities, where 'long-term' is measured in decades and centuries. That corrective is the Clock of the Long Now.
Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. This trend, which originates in the accelerating changes in technology, the short-term perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election priorities of democracies and the distractions of personal multi-tasking, is on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to short-sightedness is needed – some mechanism or myth that teaches us to take the long view and to accept our long-term responsibilities, where 'long-term' is measured in decades and centuries. That corrective is the Clock of the Long Now.
The Clock of the Long Now is both a mechanism and a myth. It is a long-term project designed to encourage people to think beyond the psychological barrier of the millennium and into the future. The Long Now Foundation, founded by some of the world's most influential and cutting-edge thinkers, plan to build a gigantic mechanical clock, perhaps as large as Stonehenge, in the American desert. It is intended to record time for 10,000 years.
Such an impressive and well engineered structure should reframe the way people think about their responsibilities towards the generations that follow them. It could come to embody the 'long term'. It may even do for thinking about time what photographs of Earth from space have done for thinking about the environment.
The Clock of the Long Now combines an account of fantastic technology with a visionary philosophical enquiry about our relationship to time in a way that could change dramatically the way we think about the next millennia.
Acclaim for Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn
'A classic and probably a work of genius.' Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities
'A stunning exploration of the design of design... How Buildings Learn will irrevocably alter youur sense of place, space and the artifacts that shape them.' Michael Shrage, Wired
'A fascinating and indefinable book... How Buildings Learn is a hymn to entropy, a witty heterodox book dedicated to kicking the stuffing out of the proposition that architecture is permanent and buildings cannot adapt.' Stephen Bayley, The Times
'Penetratingly original' Philip Morrison, Scientific American --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Time and Responsibility.What a prime subject for vapid truism and gaseous generalities adding up to the world's most boring sermon. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Time and Responsibility.What a prime subject for vapid truism and gaseous generalities adding up to the world's most boring sermon. Read the first page
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
This is the type of book I guess I always look for when I enter a bookstore .. one that is going to give a profound new perspective or insight into life. The book, and the whole Long Now foundation, are all about giving people a new perspective ... 10,000 miles high, or rather 10,000 years. It is largely a collection of short, concise essays on the subject about the future and our responsibility to it ... but the timescales involved are not concerned with the next generation, or the next fifty years, but rather what we are doing now to improve and secure the future of the planet and humanity 10,000 years from now. The book also serves as collateral for the author's real long term project .. to build a clock that will last for 10,000 years .. intended as icon / myth to get people thining about their responsibilities to the real long term future. If you haven't heard of the of the Long Now Foundation, or the Clock of the Long Now, then you surely will in the years to come .. its founders are amongst the leading thinkers and engineers that have led the information age revolution .. Mitch Kapor, Danny Hillis, Steware Brand. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys thought-provoking ideas of the most profound sort .. and as a book that will possibly change the way you think about your own future as well as that of humanities.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best collections of essays on sustainability and resilience, as well as long term planning
26 Jan 2010
By AK
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
While I have been intensely interested in long term planning and sustainability - both professionally and personally - I only discovered this gem of a book rather late. It is a collection of essays, joined by the common theme of the 'Clock of the Long Now' project - with the aim of building a mechanical clock designed to last 10,000 years.
The questions addressed by the essays differ in the framing of the problems and their solutions - namely the change in perspective from a week, month, year or even decade to hundreds, thousands or 10,000 year timespans. Over that period of time many problems are much more amenable to solving. On the other hand taking that perspective also leads to designing solutions maximising the resilience of the systems designed - to be as good under as many possible futures as possible, rather than optimising them for a single future, which seems likely in the short run but is in effect increadibly unlikely to materialise over a period longer than a couple of years.
I feel the examples are much more eye opening and powerful than the regular 'scare tactics' employed for the purpose. The book will also nicely complement other such volumes, which mostly work on a shorter time scale such as The Limits to Growth: The 30-year Update, The Living Company: Growth Learning and Longevity in Business, Brain of the Firm (Classic Beer Series) or Organizational Transformation and Learning: A Cybernetic Approach to Management and Organization. As opposed to several of these mentioned above, the book can easily be read by a layperson and does not require much in terms of background reading, either.
The questions addressed by the essays differ in the framing of the problems and their solutions - namely the change in perspective from a week, month, year or even decade to hundreds, thousands or 10,000 year timespans. Over that period of time many problems are much more amenable to solving. On the other hand taking that perspective also leads to designing solutions maximising the resilience of the systems designed - to be as good under as many possible futures as possible, rather than optimising them for a single future, which seems likely in the short run but is in effect increadibly unlikely to materialise over a period longer than a couple of years.
I feel the examples are much more eye opening and powerful than the regular 'scare tactics' employed for the purpose. The book will also nicely complement other such volumes, which mostly work on a shorter time scale such as The Limits to Growth: The 30-year Update, The Living Company: Growth Learning and Longevity in Business, Brain of the Firm (Classic Beer Series) or Organizational Transformation and Learning: A Cybernetic Approach to Management and Organization. As opposed to several of these mentioned above, the book can easily be read by a layperson and does not require much in terms of background reading, either.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By I. D. Watson
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This project expands our limited perception of time, from the here and now to a timespan which stretches from the ending of the last ice age through the growth of recorded civilisation over ten thousand years to the present day and then onwards another ten thousand years into the future.
The clock of the long now will be designed to keep time accurately over the next hundred centuries and so link us in a temporal sense to our childrens' childrens' children and beyond, many generations from now.The book challenges our narrow views of times past, present and a far off future which we will not see ourselves. In an era of exponentially accelerating change it is a reminder of how far we have come and yet how far we have to go in that vast span of time.
The clock of the long now will be designed to keep time accurately over the next hundred centuries and so link us in a temporal sense to our childrens' childrens' children and beyond, many generations from now.The book challenges our narrow views of times past, present and a far off future which we will not see ourselves. In an era of exponentially accelerating change it is a reminder of how far we have come and yet how far we have to go in that vast span of time.
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