Long-Term Planning: The Clock Of The Long Now
Over the past couple of months, in particular after finishing reading this, I have become obsessed with how short-term our thinking is - blasting planners whenever I have the chance.
A new TED talk showed up that highlights The Clock of the Long Now. I can’t really recommend the video as I found it to be boring. But while the video is boring - mostly pictures about a big mountain where they’re going to build this super-long-enduring clock - the idea is anything but.
The Clock of the Long Now is one of several projects of The Long Now Foundation, which aims to get us to think more long-term. The Clock is being designed so that it will keep time for up to 10,000 years. Right now we’re in the year 2008 AD. The Clock will, if properly maintained, keep accurate time until the year 12008 AD - give or take. That’s a long time.
Stewart Brand is one of the thinkers behind this project, and he’s got what I think is a great quote:
Civilization is reviving 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.
– Stewart Brand
Stewart is one of the hyperlegends of Silicon Valley. He’s been many things to many types of projects, but ‘environmentalist’ is certainly a fitting description, which means he fits right in around here. He lobbied NASA to release a now-iconic photo that you may have seen before:
The Long Now Foundation has a blog, and they host a lecture series on long-term thinking which seems very cool.
Check out the description of the Foundation from their About page:
The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996* to develop the Clock and Library projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide a 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.
The ‘01996′ date is 1996 - the preceding zero is one small way they hope to get people thinking more long-term.
Maybe if we start looking at the world with a more long-term view, we won’t have to waste our time talking about BRT vs. light rail - the answer, because we are thinking long-term, will become obvious.
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