Long Now Foundation
Encyclopedia : L : LO : LON : Long Now Foundation
The Long Now Foundation, established in 1996 (or "01996"), is a private organization that seeks to become the seed of a very long-term cultural institution. It aims to provide a counterpoint to today's "faster/cheaper" mindset and to promote "slower/better" thinking. The Long Now Foundation hopes to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years. To emphasize this horizon, the group writes years using five digits instead of four: 02009 instead of 2009.
Projects
The Foundation has several ongoing projects, including a 10,000-year clock known as the Clock of the Long Now, the Rosetta Project, the Long Bet Project, the open source Timeline Tool (also known as Longviewer) and the Long Server.The purpose of the Clock of the Long Now is to construct a timepiece that will operate with minimum human intervention for ten millennia. It is to be constructed of durable materials, to be easy to repair, and to be made of largely valueless materials in case knowledge of the Clock is lost or it is deemed to be of no value to an individual or possible future civilization; in this way it is hoped that the Clock will not be looted or destroyed. Its power source (or sources) should be renewable but similarily unlootable. A prototype of a potential final clock candidate was activated on December 31, 01999, and is currently on display at the Science Museum at London. The Foundation hopes to construct the finished Clock at a location near Ely, Nevada.
The Rosetta Project is an effort to preserve all languages that have a high likelihood of extinction over the period from 02000 to 02100. These include many languages whose native speakers number in the thousands or less. Other languages with many more speakers are considered endangered by the project due to the increasing importance of English as an international language of commerce and culture. Samples of such languages are to be inscribed onto a disc of nickel alloy two inches (5.08 cm) across. A "Version 1.0" of the disc was completed in the Fall of 02002.
The Seminars About Long-term Thinking are a series of monthly lectures in San Francisco, CA, presented by the Foundation. They are intended to "nudge civilization toward making long-term thinking automatic and common." Topics have included preserving environmental resources, the extension of the human lifespan, the likelihood of an asteroid strike in the future, SETI, and the nature of time.
Members
Members of the Long Now Foundation include Danny Hillis (inventor of the Connection Machine), Stewart Brand, Brian Eno, Kevin Kelly, Esther Dyson, Doug Carlston.See Also
- The year 10,000 problem, which will only be a problem if there is minimal software innovation in the next 7,900 years or so.
External links
- [The Long Now Foundation]
- [The Long Now discussion forum]
- [The Seminars About Long-term Thinking]
- [The Rosetta Project]
- [The Long Bets Foundation]
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.