The Long Now Foundation’s monthly Seminars About Long-term Thinking

presents Rick Prelinger’s “Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 4”

Friday December 4, 02009 at 7:30 pm at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco

Long Now Members can reserve 2 seats, join today!

or you can purchase tickets for $10 each.

About this Seminar:

Rick Prelinger, a guerrilla archivist who collects the uncollected and makes it accessible, presents the fourth of his annual Lost Landscapes of San Francisco screenings. You’ll see an eclectic montage of rediscovered and rarely-seen film clips showing life, landscapes, labor and leisure in a vanished San Francisco as captured by amateurs, newsreel cameramen and industrial filmmakers.

There may be more than nine billion humans by 2050, which begs the question: how will they all get fed? Particularly when you consider that we’re having trouble feeding the six billion who are already here.

Some recent news stories about food:

1. The scope of the problem:
1.02 billion people hungry: one sixth of humanity undernourished, more than ever before
Climate change is worsening food insecurity, experts say

2. Food instability breeds other kinds of instability:
Refugees protest food disruption in Uganda
Fight against hunger key to security: Clinton

3. It’s not just the developing world that’s at risk:
Britain will starve without GM crops, says major report
US crop yields could wilt in heat
Methane’s impact on global warming far higher than previously thought

4. Can farmers save us?
Prairie pioneer seeks to reinvent the way we farm (thanks to Shane Runquist for the pointer)
Bill Gates bets a billion on ag research

5. We truly are what we eat:
Rats on a junk food diet behave like drug addicts
Mediterranean diet associated with reduced risk of depression

We invite you to submit Long News story suggestions here.

Audience members at Arthur Ganson’s Seminar on September 14, 02009 were among the first viewers of The Lava Project Documentary, which premiered in our new Long Shorts series – short videos that explore, explain, or exemplify long-term thinking and responsibility.

The Lava Project Documentary was created by White Elephant DesignLab, a group of designers who explore natural phenomena and experiment with various materials and their external influences. Earlier this year, the group created a piece at the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii that was inspired by our promotion of long-term thinking through use of the five-digit date. Using a “02009″ stamp made of hardwood and aluminum, they imprinted the congealing surface crust of Pāhoehoe lava in order to equip the emerging lithosphere with its date of origin.

“We developed the idea of using this symbol only when we had already arrived on the island,” says Tobias Kestel of the design team. “We thought it was just the right symbol to use in this context of volcanic activity. Processes of new land being formed by lava flows have been going on for billions of years on the planet, which provided the perfect ground for embossing your symbol of long-term thinking.”

“We are aware,” Kestel adds, “that some people might still argue that we actually did alter the environment there. At the same time, the symbolic value and the message and discussions our action will provoke can be and will be of relevance, even if only a few people will start to think differently after having seen the results and having learned about your project, as we will always promote our project together with the reference to The Long Now Foundation.”

For additional photos and information about The Lava Project Documentary, visit the White Elephant DesignLab website.

There is new media available from our monthly series, the Seminars About Long-term Thinking. Stewart Brand’s summaries and audio downloads or podcasts of the talks are free to the public; Long Now members can view HD video of the Seminars and comment on them.

Watch the video of  Stewart Brand’s “Rethinking Green”

What seems to be the first real optical archival digital tech is now shipping. The Millenniata product is a type of DVD storage that uses a mechanical scratching process, instead of a thermal process, making the media vastly more stable.  The disks are in the current DVD standard and the company claims they are therefore backwards compatable to normal players.  To write your own disk however you will need the $1700 writer and one of the special blank disks that range from $16-$25ea depending on qty.

If the companies claims on life-span of the media are true this is a major milestone in commodity level archival media.  I do think however that they really need some sort of marking on the tops of all the blank media that explains what the DVD data stadard is and how to read it.  Otherwise in a 100 years, I cant imagine that many people will remember…

The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics is holding its 10th anniversary Quantum to Cosmos Festival this month in Waterloo, Ontario.  The 10 day extravaganza has the theme this year of “Ideas for the Future” and seeks to “take a global audience from the strange world of subatomic particles to the outer frontiers of the universe.”

They’ve got lots of great lectures that are free to view online, including several by speakers in our seminar series:

• Stewart Brand will be on The Agenda with Steve Paikin Friday night to discuss science’s evolving role in society and on Saturday he’ll be giving his own lecture on his Ecopragmatist Manifesto, Whole Earth Discipline.
• Peter Diamandis spoke on Sunday about the X Prize Foundation.
• Neal Stephenson spoke with Lee Smolin and Jaron Lanier about using fiction as a window into science and he’ll be joining Tuesday night’s panel on The Agenda with Steve Paikin to discuss our increasingly wired lives.

There are many other scientists and thinkers on the schedule, and each of these lectures will become available online shortly after the live event, so keep checking back on the full list to see what’s new.  (A play button will appear on the icon for each event once the video is released.)

The Long Now Foundation’s monthly Seminars About Long-term Thinking

presents Sander van der Leeuw on “The Archaeology of Innovation”

Wednesday November 18, 02009 at 7:30 pm at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco

Long Now Members can reserve 2 seats, join today!

or you can purchase tickets for $10 each.

About this Seminar:

Are we the first civilization to try and innovate our way out of climate change? How have past societies engineered sustainable solutions to a shifting world?

The Annosphere tells time, but more usefully, it presents time. It shows you sunrise and sunset, the start of spring and the winter solstice. It lets you see on your desk what you can’t see in the world: the steady pace of time, the subtle day to day changes in sunlight and shadow, the cycles that run through each year.

The Annosphere is emblematic of what Mr. Goodman calls an intuitive grasp of time – time that is told by instinct, season and cultural benchmark, rather than being parceled out in minutes and seconds. He tells an illustrative story: Once, in a hotel in Europe, he noticed that the shower knob was demarcated in degree readings. He got to musing on the fact that he had no idea, in degrees, how hot he liked his shower. “The shower had degree readings on the knob, but who knows the exact temperature they like their shower? The right way to set a shower is where it’s comfortable, the right way to measure time is the same.”

“Can you wake yourself up at a specific time without an alarm clock?” He adds, “It’s easy!”

Mr. Goodman once told his wife to set her alarm for 8:15, and he would wake her up at 8am. For him, time is just as much an art of observation as it is ticking off minutes and seconds. Through having a grasp on what the room looked like at certain times of day, coupled with knowing things like his own sleep habits and other cues for his sense of timing, he was able, much to his wife’s disbelief, to get her to work on time without the use of the alarm clock.

He makes a note of other intuitive methods for judging time – there is apocryphal story that states the day that farmers let the boars and sows breed, they would notch their fingernails at the point they emerged from their skin. When the notch had grown all the way out, the sow was ready to give birth. Likewise, cultural celebrations such as the lunar new year and mid-autumn festivals encourage people to think about the changing points of the year, and prepare mentally and physically.

After all this explanation of gut feeling for time and representing it in mechanical form, the irony that lies with the construction of the Annosphere is the fact that Mr. Goodman must use, and enjoys using, highly precise machinery to build something whose measurements are, at best, approximate. Sometimes, the machines he uses to build the end result are far more complex than the Annosphere itself. To Goodman, “The practice is a meditation.”

Also meditative is watching the Annosphere perform its calculations, which, says Goodman, is also a part of the process – “Writing down the instructions for a thing is not as easy as seeing the thing go – people should be able to interpret the machine on their own.” Like the Clock Of The Long Now, the Annosphere is an elegant bridge between the natural and the mechanical; a reminder of an inherent human ability that is often overlooked in a world of rush hours, work schedules and carefully boxed out minutes and seconds.

At a recent conference, Ray Kurzweil spoke about a future when tiny robots will swarm through our bloodstreams, repairing damage and curing disease. Well, the truth is, that future is already here — if you’re a mouse.

A sampling of recent news stories of tiny treatments:

1. Ouch: Nanobees zap tumors with real bee venom

2. Nanotherapies from many different labs:
Nanotech gene therapy kills ovarian cancer in mice
Researchers effectively treat tumors with use of nanotubes
Gel heals injured brain and bone

3. More fun with magnets:
Nanomagnets guide stem cells to damaged tissue
Using magnetism to turn drugs on and off

4. It’s not just for mice: Robot can crawl through human body

5.  Ouch, again: Mosquito bites used to deliver malaria “vaccine”

6. And further speculation from Dr. Kurzweil: Nanotech could make humans immortal by 2040

We invite you to submit Long News story suggestions here.

Some months ago the good folks at Meetup.com set up Long Now with our own Meetup domain http://longnow.meetup.com/.  Since that time over 450  people have signed up and several meetup groups have become active around the world.  These groups have met to discuss the Seminar Series, host a local speaker on long-term thinking, go to a related event, or just get together to discuss similar interests.  Brian Eno and I have attended them in London, Laura Welcher (director of the Rosettta Project) spoke at one in Chicago, and groups are now going in Paris, Brussels, New York, Italy, and Portland.

The quality of people and discussion has been excellent at all the group meetings I have seen.  Please do sign up if you have the interest, and let us know if you need any help getting a group going in your area.  Long Now Associate Bryan Campen is working on a “starter kit” for these groups and we now have a mailing list for all the group leaders to connect with eachother.

There is new media available from our monthly series, the Seminars About Long-term Thinking.  Stewart Brand’s summaries and audio downloads or podcasts of the talks are free to the public; Long Now members can view HD video of the Seminars and comment on them.

Read the summary of Stewart Brand’s “Rethinking Green”

Listen to the Audio of Stewart Brand’s “Rethinking Green” (downloads tab)

The Long Now Foundation is pleased to announce our new website.  (If you’re seeing this update in a reader, click through to see whats new.)

One of the biggest changes we’ve made is on the Seminars section.    We’ve given each Seminar its own individual page where you’ll be able to download content, read more about the speakers and their efforts, and (if you’re a member) post your thoughts on the lecture as a comment.

We’ve also increased the opportunities for social interaction around Long Now projects and ideas.  Check these out on the Community page.  And if you’re not already a Member, consider joining our 2,100 person strong, globe-spanning community of long-term thinkers.

Be well,
Long Now Staff

Via BoingBoing this morning comes a wonderful ambient music generating clock of the stars.  Jim Bumgardner created this piece and explains it thusly:

To make this, I downloaded public data from Hipparcos, a satellite launched by the European Space Agency in 1989 that accurately measured over a hundred thousand stars. The data I downloaded contains position, parallax, magnitude, and color information, among other things.

I used this information to plot the brightest stars, and cause them to revolve about Polaris (the North Star) very slowly, as the stars appear to do. Like the night sky, this is a sidereal time clock — it takes nearly 24 hours for the stars to fully rotate. You’ll notice some familiar constellations, such as the Big Dipper in there. As the stars cross zero and 180 degrees, indicated by the center line, the clock plays an individual note, or chime for each star. The pitch of the chime is based on the star’s BV measurement (which roughly corresponds to color or temperature). The volume is based on the star’s magnitude, or apparent brightness, and the stereo panning is based on the position on the screen (use headphones to hear it better).

Enjoy!

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For all the Long Now and Brian Eno fans down in the LA area -  The University Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach is presenting an installation of Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings through December.

The LA Times has a good description of the installation and brief interview with Mr. Eno:

It consists of a wall of 12 computer-operated monitors of varying dimensions, displaying a procession of constantly mutating images that group and regroup into a virtually limitless series of configurations. The protean “paintings” are accompanied by Eno’s ambient original score.

Eno also designed the installation’s computer software and hand-drew the interchangeable images on slides, using etching tools and paintbrushes. Most of the configurations are abstract, but Eno occasionally added variety by tossing in found art culled from magazines and elsewhere.

…

“The dominant theory coming out of Hollywood is that peoples’ attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and they need more stimulation,” Eno says. “I point to this work as a counter-problem. I think it’s a myth that American public or any other public is so stupid that they need to be constantly pricked.”

The University Art Museum’s telephone number is 562.985.5761 and they are open Tuesdays through Sundays from noon to 5pm, except Thursdays, on which they stay open until 8pm.

Long Now presented the North American premiere of the piece in 02007 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.