Long Now

What if AI is not here actually to replace us, but to remind us who we actually are? That was the question at the heart of Kim Carson’s Long Now Talk. In “Inspired by Intelligence: Purpose and Creativity in the AI Era,” Carson, a creative technologist and futurist, challenged us to avoid the easy narratives of tech-driven utopia and dystopia, charting a course through those two extremes that made the case for AI not as a way to make humans unnecessary but to emphasize our most important creative capacities. For Carson, AI is a sort of tool for thought — a mirror that we can use to re-inspire ourselves towards greater creativity. Accompanied by video art made using the SORA text-to-video model by Charles Lindsay, she made the case that AI could be used not just for automating labor but also for reclaiming human agency. That means using these new technological modes as enablers for human thought and action, while recognizing their gaps, too — the questions about ourselves that only we can answer, no matter how sophisticated our technology becomes. As she ended her remarks, Kim made one final note on how we can make a better world collaboratively and creatively: our society does not need “more optimization, it needs more imagination.” This talk was presented April 22, 02025 at The Interval at Long Now in San Francisco.

“What is life?” In her Long Now Talk, astrobiologist and theoretical physicist Sara Imari Walker explores the many dimensions of that seemingly simple question. Starting from the simplest precursors, Walker assembled a grand cathedral of meaning, tracing an arc across existence that linked the fundamentals of organic chemistry, the possibility space of lego bricks, and the materialist philosophy of Madonna. As the leader of one of the largest international theory groups in the origins of life and astrobiology, Walker has worked an interdisciplinary team of researchers to devise assembly theory: a theory of life and its origins that finds that life is the only way to create complex objects, and that the existence of complex objects is fundamentally and quantifiably rare. Assembly theory’s focus on complexity and countability allows astrobiologists like Walker to grapple with the sheer vastness of combinatorial space — the set of all things that could possibly exist. Show notes: https://longnow.org/ideas/informational-theory-life/

Presented in partnership with Manny's and City Arts & Lectures As they look upon the United States of America in 02025, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson see a country wrought by a half-century of failed governance. They see states and cities theoretically committed to progressive futures instead bogged down in labyrinthine mires of process and deliberation — a society stuck in low gear. Yet they also see opportunity to turn those failures on their heads, and to build a better society based around more responsive, efficient governance. This is the vision that animates Abundance, Klein and Thompson’s new book and the focus of their Long Now Talk, hosted by Michael Pollan and co-sponsored with Manny’s and City Arts & Lectures. Despite Long Now’s focus on long-term thinking — of counterbalancing civilization’s pathologically short attention span — there was much to appreciate in Klein and Thompson’s call for American governance to “rediscover speed as a progressive value.” In their wide-ranging discussion, the two authors made the case for a vision of liberalism that builds, both for its own sake and as a bulwark against reactionary right-wing movements that have capitalized on the shortcomings of contemporary progressive politics. Episode Notes: https://longnow.org/ideas/abundance

Stephen Heintz and Kim Stanley Robinson say we live in an “Age of Turbulence.” Looking around our geopolitical situation, it’s easy to see what they mean. Faced with the ever-growing threat of climate change, the looming potential breakdown of the post-01945 international order, and the ambiguous prospects of rapid technological changes in fields like AI, biotechnology, and geoengineering, it is clear that we need new answers to new challenges. Stephen Heintz, a Public policy expert and president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), and Kim Stanley Robinson, one of the most acclaimed science fiction authors writing today, work in very different fields. But each of them in his own way has sketched out a vision of what we must do to face down the intersecting crises of our time: While their methods may differ, they align on their conclusions. In their Long Now Talk, Heintz and Robinson propose what they refer to as “A Logic For The Future” — a new path for international relations in the face of the chaos of our current age. Episode Notes: https://longnow.org/ideas/a-logic-for-the-future/

How will AI shape our understanding of our creativity and ourselves? In February, artist and technologist K Allado-McDowell delivered a fascinating Long Now Talk that explored the dimensions of Neural Media — their term for an emerging set of creative forms that use artificial neural networks inspired by the connective design of the human brain. Their Long Now Talk is a journey through the strange valleys and outcroppings of this age of neural media, telling a story involving statistical distributions, anti-aging influencers at war with death itself, and vast quantities of “AI Slop,” the low-quality, faintly surreal output of cheap, rapidly proliferating image models. Yet even in this morass of slop Allado-McDowell sees reason for optimism. Referring to the title of their 02020 book Pharmako-AI, which was co-written with GPT-3, Allado-McDowell notes that the Greek word pharmakon could mean both drug and cure. What may seem poisonous or dangerous in this new paradigm of neural media could also unlock for us new and deeper ways of understanding ourselves, our planet, and all of the intelligent networks that live within it. Show notes: https://longnow.org/ideas/neural-media/

When you feel the future, how do you share that feeling in order to build community? Over the past quarter-century, Best — first as an actor, musician, and performer, and later as an Afrofuturist scholar and lecturer — has worked to answer that question. Drawing on his experiences as a cast member on the award-winning percussion performance Stomp, as Jar-Jar Binks, the ground-breaking first major CGI character actor in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, and as a lecturer at the Stanford d.school and one of the leaders of the AfroRithms Futures Group. By bringing people together through electrifying performance and thought-provoking conversation, Best’s work has been able to make the future not just an abstract, intellectual consideration but something that can be felt in collective experience. The core of Ahmed’s argument? Feeling is a form of communication in itself, beyond words — and only by taking action and sharing our feelings of the future with each other in our communities can we create the futures we want for ourselves. Using a diverse range of creative and imaginative tactics, Best incorporates play and motion in order to help audiences Feel The Future. In his Long Now Talk, Best is joined on stage in conversation with Long Now Board Member Lisa Kay Solomon. As a Futurist in Residence at the Stanford d.school, Solomon teaches classes like “Inventing the future” and “View from the future,” to help leaders and learners learn skills to anticipate and adapt to increasingly complex futures. Lisa recently joined the board of the Long Now Foundation, and is passionate about helping infusing futures thinking and practices into both classrooms and board rooms. This talk was presented February 14, 02025 at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. Episode notes: https://longnow.org/ideas/feel-the-future/

We find ourselves in a pre-paradigmatic moment in which our technology has outpaced our theories of what to do with it. The task of philosophy today is to catch up. Benjamin Bratton is a Professor of Philosophy of Technology and Speculative Design at University of California, San Diego and the Director of Antikythera, an cross-disciplinary think tank researching the philosophy of computation supported by Berggruen Institute. In his Long Now Talk, Bratton takes us on a whirlwind philosophical journey into the concept of Planetary Computation — a journey that began in classical Greece with the story of the Antikythera mechanism, the analog computer that gave his think-tank its name. But his inquiry stretches far beyond antiquity — back to the very origins of biological life itself and forward to a present and future where we must increasingly grapple with artificial life and intelligence. Show notes: https://longnow.org/ideas/a-philosophy-of-planetary-computation/

Social philosopher Roman Krznaric and renegade economist Kate Raworth explore how we can survive and thrive by looking to the past for clues on how to build more regenerative economic frameworks. Doughnut economics describes the social and planetary boundaries needed for all people to prosper within the means of the living planet. Studying historic examples through the lens of doughnut economics, Krznaric and Raworth find the environmentally safe and socially just space in which humanity and all other living things can flourish.

Neal Stephenson, visionary speculative fiction author and long-time friend of Long Now, joined us for a conversation with journalist Charles C. Mann on the research behind his new novel Polostan, the dawn of the Atomic Age, and the craft of historical storytelling. Polostan is the first installment in a monumental new series called Bomb Light - an expansive historical epic of intrigue and international espionage, presaging the dawn of the Atomic Age. Set against the turbulent decades of the early twentieth century, Polostan is an inventive, richly detailed, and deeply entertaining historical epic from Stephenson, whose prior books include Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

2 nights of live science storytelling, art & music the evenings of May 12th & May 13th at St. Joseph's Arts Society; there is one show each night, doors are at 7:00pm and the show starts at 8:00pm. The Long Now Foundation has teamed up with Anthropocene Magazine (a publication of Future Earth) and Back Pocket Media to take the magazine’s new fiction series “The Climate Parables,” from the page to the stage. Starting with the idea that survival in the Anthropocene depends on upgrading not just our technology, but also our collective imagination, 3 acclaimed storytellers will perform work from creative science fiction writers Kim Stanley Robinson, Marc Alpert and Eliot Peper. Think of it as climate reporting from the future. Tales of how we succeeded in harnessing new technology and science to work with nature, rather than against it. It’s all wrapped up in an evening of performed journalism that blends science and technology, fiction and non-fiction, video, art, and music. What could possibly go right? Anthropocene Magazine's Climate Parables is made possible with funding support of the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation. Supporting Sponsors: The Carbon Collective: Charm Industrial, Living Carbon, Vesta, Lithos Carbon and other innovators in the space are teaming up to support the Climate Parables and share their visions of a world with less carbon. They will have a dedicated space at the event to showcase their solutions.

How can we turn the tide on species loss and help biodiversity and bioabundance flourish for millennia to come? Ryan Phelan is Executive Director of Revive & Restore; the leading wildlife conservation organization promoting the incorporation of biotechnologies into standard conservation practice. Phelan will share the new Genetic Rescue Toolkit for conservation – a suite of biotechnology tools and conservation applications that offer hope and a path to recovery for threatened species. In this talk, Phelan will present examples of the toolkit in action, including corals that better withstand rising ocean temperatures, trees that withstand a fungal blight, and the genetic rescue of the black-footed ferret, once thought to be extinct. Revive & Restore brings biotechnologies to conservation in responsible ways; from engaging local communities where ecological restorations are underway, to connecting stakeholders in disciplines like biotech, bioethics, conservation organizations and government agencies. Together, they are forging new paths to bioabundance in our changing world. Ryan Phelan will be joined by forecaster and Long Now Board Member Paul Saffo for the Q&A; to discuss long-term outcomes and the Intended Consequences framing used by Revive & Restore.

Join us for a thought-provoking conversation between two Hugo award-winning science fiction authors, Becky Chambers and Annalee Newitz. Known for challenging classic science fiction tropes such as war, violence, and colonialism, both authors create vivid and immersive worlds that are filled with non-human persons, peace, and a subtle sense of hope. The authors will discuss what it means to take these alternative themes seriously, delve into their writing & world building process, and explore how science fiction can help us imagine new futures that can make sense of our current civilizational struggles.