The daily news tells us what happened yesterday. It rarely tells us what’s happening tomorrow. Kirk Citron curates the Long News: looking for longer-term trends that will matter for decades, centuries, even millennia. “The Long News: What Stories Will Matter for Centuries?” was given on January 19, 02016 as part of The Long Now Foundation’s […]

Consider this, optimists. All the societies in the world can collapse simultaneously. It has happened before. In the 12th century BCE the great Bronze Age civilizations of the Mediterranean—all of them—suddenly fell apart. Their empires evaporated, their cities emptied out, their technologies disappeared, and famine ruled. Mycenae, Minos, Assyria, Hittites, Canaan, Cyprus—all gone. Even Egypt

The pundits we all listen to are no better at predictions than a “dart-throwing chimp,” and they are routinely surpassed by normal news-attentive citizens. So Philip Tetlock reported in his 02005 book, “Expert Political Judgement”—and in a January 02007 SALT talk. It now turns out there are some people who are spectacularly good at forecasting,

Before Andy Weir’s self-published novel “The Martian” became a “New York Times” bestseller and a blockbuster film, it began as a series of blog posts. Those posts, and the online conversation they sparked, reflect Andy’s lifelong love of space and his detailed research into how humans could survive a journey to the fourth planet in

The Executive Editor of Imbibe magazine and author of The Cocktail Chronicles looks back 150 years and then forward to ask:
 What Will They Drink in 02115? “The Cocktail Crystal Ball” was given on October 20, 02015 as part of The Long Now Foundation’s “Conversations at The Interval” Salon Talks. These hour long talks are

Infrastructure decisions—and failures to decide—affect everything about a society for centuries. That long shadow, James Fallows points out, is what makes the decisions so difficult, because “We must choose among options whose consequences we can’t fully anticipate.” What we do know is that infrastructure projects are hugely disruptive and expensive in the short term, and

In recent years 
the automation debate has returned. Author and veteran tech journalist John Markoff discusses the potential and peril in designing robots for human use. “The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots” was given on September 29, 02015 as part of The Long Now Foundation’s “Conversations at The Interval” Salon Talks. These

So far we are trying to deal with climate change at the wrong time scale. A really deep problem cannot be solved by shallow innovations, no matter how clever. The scale of climate change requires thinking and acting in multi-decade terms at the level of infrastructure—personal as well as societal. Get it right, and “the

“Rumsey Map Collection preview event” was given on August 25, 02015 as part of The Long Now Foundation’s “Conversations at The Interval” Salon Talks. These hour long talks are recorded live at The Interval, our bar, cafe, & museum in San Francisco. Since 02014 this series has presented artists, authors, entrepreneurs, scientists (and more) taking

We are one tool away from learning which distant planets already have life on them and which might be welcoming to life. MIT Planetary Scientist Sara Seager is working on the tool. She is chair of the NASA team developing a “Starshade” that would allow a relatively rudimentary space telescope to observe Earth-size planets directly,