Long Now Foundation Advocates for Civilization-Scale Long-Term Thinking
The Long Now Foundation cultivates a living library of long-term thinking titled ‘Long Now Ideas,’ connecting the past and future to provide civilization-scale context. This platform explores stories and concepts ranging from ancient history to the distant future, including Indy Johar’s ‘Civilizational Optionality’ and Melody Jue’s ‘Interspecies Ecologies.’
The library also features diverse discussions, such as Stefan Sagmeister’s insights on fashion, Dave Bujnowski’s emphasis on infrastructure in ‘It’s Good to Be Infrastructure,’ and Rick Prelinger’s warning about the digital dark age in ‘No Film Left Unscanned.’ These ideas underscore the importance of heeding our deep past to fulfill our responsibility to ‘the long now’ and adopt a perspective that views the entire Earth as ‘the big here.’
This initiative also introduces frameworks like ‘Pace Layers’ to understand technological and cultural shifts over millennia, aiming to unravel how and why civilizations function. It prompts a re-evaluation of the significance of adopting a long-term view, even as we confront preservation challenges in the digital era, urging us to grasp the ‘essential art of civilization.’