Long Now co-founder Brian Eno on time, music, and contextuality in a recent interview, rhyming on Gregory Bateson’s definition of information as “a difference that makes a difference”: If a Martian came to Earth and you played her a late Beethoven String Quartet and then another written by a first-year music student, it is unlikely […]
The Alchemical Brothers: Brian Eno & Roger Eno Interviewed Read More »
The oldest beds known to science now date back nearly a quarter of a million years: traces of silicate from woven grasses found in the back of Border Cave (in South Africa, which has a nearly continuous record of occupation dating back to 200,000 BCE). Ars Technica reports: Most of the artifacts that survive from
People slept on comfy grass beds 200,000 years ago Read More »
It is with great sadness that we share the news that our dear friend and colleague Michael McElligott is in hospice care. We want to take this moment to appreciate all that Michael has done for Long Now. Most of the Long Now community knows Michael as the face of the Conversations at The Interval
A Tribute to Michael McElligott, creator of “Conversations at The Interval” Read More »
Amazing wildlife photography by Kathryn Cooper reveals the brushwork of birds and their flocks through sky, hidden by the quickness of the human eye. “Staple Newk” by Kathryn Cooper. Ever since Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering photography of animal locomotion in 01877 and 01878 (including the notorious “horse shot by pistol” frames from an era less concerned
Kathryn Cooper’s Wildlife Movement Photography Read More »
Bronze-Age crime scene forensics: newly discovered artifacts only deepen the mystery of a 3,300-year-old battle. What archaeologists previously thought to be a local skirmish looks more and more like a regional conflict that drew combatants in from hundreds of kilometers away…but why? Much like the total weirdness of the Ediacaran fauna of 580 million years
Puzzling artifacts found at Europe’s oldest battlefield Read More »
Photograph: Scott Thrift. “We already have timepieces that show us how to be on time. These are timepieces that show us how to be in time.” – Scott Thrift Slow clocks are growing in popularity, perhaps as a tonic for or revolt against the historical trend of ever-faster timekeeping mechanisms. Given that bell tower clocks
“I have always felt I have an obligation to build the future I want to see. We know that AI-powered cyber-physical systems (CPS) will scale in society. The challenge we face now is how we do that responsibly and sustainably? If we act proactively, we can avoid some of the negative impacts we have seen
Genevieve Bell – The 4th Industrial Revolution: Responsible & Secure AI Read More »
The time-honored debate between catastrophists and gradualists (those who believe major Earth changes were due to sudden violent events or happened over long periods of time) has everything to do with the coarse grain of the geological record. When paleontologists only have a series of thousand-year flood deposits to study, it’s almost impossible to say
Scientists Have a Powerful New Tool to Investigate Triassic Dark Ages Read More »
As detailed in the exquisite documentary Proteus, the ocean floor was until very recently a repository for the dreams of humankind — the receptacle for our imagination. But when the H.M.S. Challenger expedition surveyed the world’s deep-sea life and brought it back for cataloging by now-legendary illustrator Ernst Haeckel (who coined the term “ecology”), the hidden
Big questions abound regarding the protracted childhood of Homo sapiens, but there’s a growing argument that it’s an adaptation to the increased complexity of our social environment and the need to learn longer and harder in order to handle the ever-raising bar of adulthood. (Just look to the explosion of requisite schooling over the last
Childhood as a solution to explore–exploit tensions Read More »
