Long Now: Seminars About Long-term Thinking

The Long Now Foundation
  • 4.6 (227)
  • SOCIETY & CULTURE
  • UPDATED MONTHLY
Long Now: Seminars About Long-term Thinking

Explore hundreds of lectures by scientists, historians, artists, entrepreneurs, and more through The Long Now Foundation's award-winning lecture series, curated and hosted by Long Now co-founder Stewart Brand (creator of the Whole Earth Catalog). Recorded live in San Francisco each month since 02003, past speakers include Brian Eno, Neil Gaiman, Sylvia Earle, Daniel Kahneman, Jennifer Pahlka, Steven Johnson, and many more. Watch video of these talks and learn more about our projects at Longnow.org. The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility.

  1. MAY 1

    Alicia Escott, Heidi Quante: The Bureau of Linguistical Reality Performance Lecture

    The Bureau of Linguistical Reality is a participatory artwork facilitated by artist Alicia Escott and Heidi Quante which collaborates with the public to create new words for feelings and experiences for which no words yet exist. Recognizing the climate crisis is causing new feelings and experiences that have yet to be named, the project was created with a deep focus on these and other Anthropocenic phenomena. The Bureau views the words created in this process as also serving as points of connectivity: advancing understanding, dialogue, and conversations about the greater concepts these words seek to codify. This talk was an intimate sharing of The Bureau's findings from their decade long social art practice as well as a Word Making Field Session where Escott and Quante collaborated with participants to collectively coin a term together. Participants were encouraged to consider in advance their personal unnamed experience(s) of our changing world as well as their unique feelings for which they wish there was a word and to bring the diversity of their linguistic backgrounds to this conversation as the Bureau creates neologisms in all languages.

    51 min

  2. APR 19

    Jonathan Cordero: Indigenous Sovereign Futures

    Alternative visions for social change rooted in the frameworks of capitalism and colonialism only reproduce contemporary structures of power. How can indigenous perspectives and knowledge inform the structural transformation necessary to improve the health of the natural world and of human communities? Dr. Cordero will discuss how indigenous epistemologies challenge the ideas and practices related to capitalism and colonialism and how the enhancement of indigeneity and sovereignty are critical to the maintenance of indigenous epistemologies. Insights drawn from the discourses on decolonization, settler colonialism, and epistemicide will be revealed throughout the presentation. Last, Dr. Cordero will share how indigenous perspectives and knowledge inspire work of the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone.

    56 min

  3. MAR 7

    Denise Hearn: Embodied Economies: How our Economic Stories Shape the World

    Economic policy can seem abstract and distant, but it manifests the physical world – affecting us all. Our economic stories shape our systems, and they in turn shape us. What myths continue to constrain us, and how might new stories emerge to scaffold the future? This talk will explore concepts we often take as gospel: profits, competition, economic value, efficiency, and others -- and asks how we might reshape them to better serve planetary flourishing –today, and well into the future.

    56 min

  4. 12/22/2023

    Jared Farmer: Chronodiversity: Thinking about Time with Trees

    Big trees, old trees, and especially big old trees have always been objects of reverence. From Athena’s sacred olive on the Acropolis to the unmistakable ginkgo leaf prevalent in Japanese art and fashion during the Edo period, our profound admiration for slow plants spans time and place as well as cultures and religions. At the same time, the utilization and indeed the desecration of ancient trees is a common feature of history. In the modern period, the American West, more than any other region, witnessed contradictory efforts to destroy and protect ancient conifers. Historian Jared Farmer reflects on our long-term relationships with long-lived trees, and considers the future of oldness on a rapidly changing planet.

  5. 11/22/2023

    Abby Smith Rumsey: Hijacked Histories, Polarized Futures

    As authoritarianism continues to rise around the world, the stories we tell ourselves about our collective history become a battleground for competing visions of the future. Drawing extensively from Russian history in the 20th century, Rumsey offers a framework to discuss our current social and political tensions and how our increasing polarization could shape our future.

    56 min

  6. 11/16/2023

    Henry Farrell: The Complex Aftermath of Globalization

    Over the last two years, the US government has started thinking about the future of the world in a very different way. Across speeches and policy papers, a vision of world politics has emerged which breaks sharply both with the old logic of the Cold War and the newer politics of globalization. The globalization bet has turned sour, but it has created a far more closely connected world than ever existed before. Problems such as climate change, economic inequality, food security, supply chain vulnerabilities, democratic weakness and mass migration emerge from the interdependent choices of people and governments in a global system without any global rulers. In a complex interdependent world, is the only way forward to accept these complexities, and try to work with them? That is the challenge that the US now faces – moving from the simple imagined futures of the past to a more entangled and realistic vision of our planet's future.

    59 min

  7. 10/19/2023

    Coco Krumme: The False Promise of Optimization

    Coco Krumme traces the fascinating history of optimization from its roots in America's founding principles, to its dominance as the driving principle of our modern world. Optimized models underlie everything and are deeply embedded in the technologies and assumptions that have come to comprise not only our material reality, but what we make of it. How did a mathematical concept take on such outsized cultural shape? Krumme's work in scientific computation made her aware of optimization's overreach, where she observed that streamlined systems are less resilient and more at risk of failure. They limit our options and narrow our perspectives. Optimal Illusions exposes the sizable bargains we have made in the name of optimization and asks us to consider what comes next.

    32 min

  8. 10/10/2023

    Bette Adriaanse, Chelsea T. Hicks: Radical Sharing

    Our bodies, our houses, our land, our space - we humans don’t always like to share. Author Bette Adriaanse talks with Chelsea T. Hicks, and virtual guests Brian Eno and Aqui Thami, about property and sharing, and how to make a lasting positive change in the way we share the world with each other. Alternating between thinkers and doers, whose actions help foster long term equality, this evening explores the choices that can be made to share time and resources with others in radical ways.

    57 min
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About

Explore hundreds of lectures by scientists, historians, artists, entrepreneurs, and more through The Long Now Foundation's award-winning lecture series, curated and hosted by Long Now co-founder Stewart Brand (creator of the Whole Earth Catalog). Recorded live in San Francisco each month since 02003, past speakers include Brian Eno, Neil Gaiman, Sylvia Earle, Daniel Kahneman, Jennifer Pahlka, Steven Johnson, and many more. Watch video of these talks and learn more about our projects at Longnow.org. The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility.

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