Still in the Long Now

On a Friday night not that long ago, I attended a talk in San Francisco sponsored by the Long Now Foundation. The events of that night have stayed with me, appropriately enough. Looking around I wondered at the time if not the room was filled with a rather larger-than-normal complement of time-travelers. And I seem to keep going back there in my mind; the whole experience is quite fresh and well… “Now-ish”. The impetuous for this blog started that night... ahem, THIS night. Time is strange stuff.

Now, you may not have heard about The Long Now Foundation, but they are a sort of "Commonwealth Club" started by Stewart Brand; they host monthly speakers on topics concerning the long view of human betterment. I hadn't heard of them either until … uh… now, but if the name Stewart Brand sounds familiar it should... he's the one who was responsible for the Whole Earth Catalog. He apparently still lives on a houseboat of sorts in Sausalito. Who knew? Apparently he's been involved in lots of stuff which you can read about here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand but I digress.

The speaker this Friday night was Dimitry Orlov. His talk was provocative, witty, more than a little ominous and the full text of his talk available on his blog. I highly recommend it.

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/02/social-collapse-best-practices.html

As you can see right away from the text of the link it concerns in no small or timid way a view of our current situation which is a bit outside the normal consensus. Rest assured, he does have wonderful sense of humor and he's not at all tedious or shrill. However he does have a unique perspective which I believe is worth at the very least a quick skim.

Orlov's presentation consisted of his reading the text and as he is a rather literary sort of fellow, reading his text will give you a good sense of his thesis. An MP3 audio recording has been posted online here: http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/

In the meantime, check this one out. Here is Jared Diamond speaking with Paul Solomon of PBS TV’s News Hour. Get this: it was published on that very same day, Friday the 13th of Feburary 2009. Sheesh. With such a long now, why do these guys cram it all into one day! Who ARE these guys anyway!

Perhaps even more interesting is that the video was never aired online, however it was aired on PBS radio (I heard it) and comes up in the search list (but not when you follow the link) on the PBS website. However, due to the magic of YouTube, here it is, while it lasts. Get it while it’s hot folks.



There’s a lot out there folks. There’s even a long version of his talk given at the …. wait for it ….. Long Now Foundation!




Now, how about that?