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THE LONG NOW FOUNDATION
www.longnow.org
Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention
span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology,
the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election
perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking.
All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the
short-sightedness is needed - some mechanism or myth which encourages
the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where
'long-term' is measured at least in centuries. Long Now proposes
both a mechanism and a myth.
The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today's
"faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better"
thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework
of the next 10,000 years through a series of ambitious real world
projects: Such as a 10,000 year all mechanical Clock, and information
services on the same time scale.
The 10.000 Year Clock measures time extremely slow: instead
of every second, the monumental scale clock ticks once a year. The
idea of the Clock is to encourage long-term thinking where 'long-term'
is measured at least in centuries. The development of the Clock
is being formed in the building of prototypes. The aim is to produce
a large-scale structure that would symbolize the deep time for people.
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PLAN*B FOR ARKADIANMÄKI recommends:
Participate in the Long Now Foundation projects!
The Rosetta Project is a global collaboration working to
build an online archive of all documented human languages. Fifty
to ninety percent of the world's languages are predicted to disappear
in the next century, without any significant and centralized documentation.
The Rosetta Project is changing that...
>> www.rosettaproject.org
Long Bets hopes to promote long term thinking through a public
arena for enjoyably competitive predictions, of interest to society,
with philanthropic money at stake. Some examples: "At least
one human alive in the year 2000 will still be alive in 2150";
"By 2030, commercial passengers will routinely fly in pilotless
planes." Make your own prediction!
>> www.longbets.org
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