Long Now

What is time? What is humankind’s role in the universe? What is the meaning of life? For much of human history, these questions have been the province of religion and philosophy. What answers can science provide? In this talk, Sean Carroll shared what physicists know, and don’t yet know, about the nature of time. He argued that while the universe might not have purpose, we can create meaning and purpose through how we approach reality, and how we live our lives. Sean Carroll is a Research Professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His research has focused on fundamental physics and cosmology, especially issues of dark matter, dark energy, spacetime symmetries, and the origin of the universe. Recently, Carroll has worked on the foundations of quantum mechanics, the emergence of spacetime, and the evolution of entropy and complexity. Carroll is the author of [_Something Deeply Hidden_](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781524743031), [_The Big Picture_](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780525954828), [_The Particle at the End of the Universe_](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780142180303) amongst other books and hosts the [_Mindscape_](https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/) podcast.

From the Metaverse in Snow Crash to digital currency in Cryptonomicon, Stephenson's thrilling stories offer uncanny insights into our future. [Neal Stephenson](http://www.nealstephenson.com/)'s fifth Long Now Talk featured a reading from his book [_Termination Shock_](https://www.booksmith.com/book/9780063028050) (pub. 11/16/21) and a discussion with Long Now's Executive Director and 10,000 Year Clock builder, [Alexander Rose](https://longnow.org/people/board/zander/). Neal Stephenson’s sweeping, prescient _Termination Shock_ transports readers to a near-future world, and brings together a fascinating, unexpected group of characters from different cultures and continents, whose stories collide and transform. Ranging from the Texas heartland to the Dutch royal palace in the Hague, to the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas, the novel grapples with the real-life repercussions of planetary system changes. Epic in scope while heartbreakingly human in perspective, _Termination Shock_ sounds a clarion alarm, considers dire risks, and ponders potential adaptations coming to our near future.

**Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley** track the history and future of quarantine around the globe, chasing the story of emergency isolation through time and space—from the crumbling lazarettos of the Mediterranean, built to contain the Black Death, to an experimental Ebola unit in London, and from the hallways of the CDC to closed-door simulations where pharmaceutical execs and epidemiologists prepare for the outbreak of a novel coronavirus. But the story of quarantine ranges far beyond the history of medical isolation. In their book, [_Until Proven Safe_](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780374126582), the authors tour a nuclear-waste isolation facility beneath the New Mexican desert, see plants stricken with a disease that threatens the world’s wheat supply, and meet NASA’s Planetary Protection Officer, tasked with saving Earth from extraterrestrial infections. They also introduce us to the corporate tech giants hoping to revolutionize quarantine through surveillance and algorithmic prediction. We live in a disorienting historical moment that can feel both unprecedented and inevitable; Manaugh and Twilley helped us make sense of our new reality through a thought-provoking exploration of the meaning of freedom, governance, and mutual responsibility.

As with all Long Now Talks, David Rooney’s talk on Thursday, September 9, 02021 began with a few tones from Brian Eno’s January 07003: Bell Studies for The Clock of the Long Now, based on the original algorithm for the Clock’s ever-changing chimes designed by Danny Hillis. These rings of the Clock’s bell were an especially good fit for Rooney’s talk, though: Over the course of an hour, his “History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks” engaged directly with the inexorably ticking logic of clocks just as Eno and Hillis’ work did so musically. Drawing on the wealth of stories on clocks contained within his recently published book, About Time, Rooney cleanly sketched a global history of imperial control, popular resistance, and the spread of information, illustrated vividly using clocks both ancient and modern. Rooney — a horologist and historian of technology by trade as the curator at the Science Museum, London — focused his story on three clocks within the United Kingdom and the British Raj in India between 01890 and 01920 CE. Yet his wide-ranging talk flowed naturally out of those more constrained examples, wading back through time to the reign of Timurid astronomer-king Ulūgh Beg in 01424 CE and the rule of Roman dictator and sundial-builder Manius Valerius Maximus in 00494 BCE and forward to the contemporary moment, where we are at once surrounded by clocks large and small and less aware of their presence in the form of technology like GPS satellites, which rely on atomic clocks to accurately track their positions. While his talk at times focused on the violent reactions against the imposition of clocks on oppressed populations in British India and the Roman Empire, Rooney’s overall message was one of hope: “while clocks might oppress us, clocks can and will save us as well.” The horologist, who first engaged with Long Now as the lead caretaker of Long Now's Prototype 1 10,000-year-clock, pointed to The Clock as a key example of how clocks serve as “proxies for humans,” their ticking mechanisms giving them a certain heartbeat-like quality that speaks to their deeply embodied humanity.

One of [Long Now](https://longnow.org/)’s founding premises is that humanity’s most significant challenges require long-term solutions, including institutions that caretake and guide the knowledge and commitment needed to work over long time scales. However, there are a limited number of organizations that have managed to stay stable over many centuries, and in some cases, over a millennium. Long Now has been informally tracking these organizations for years, and in 02019 formed [The Organizational Continuity Project](https://longnow.org/continuity/) to study long-lived institutions more formally. [Alexander Rose](https://longnow.org/people/board/zander/), Long Now's Executive Director, discusses how The Organizational Continuity Project hopes to discover the lessons behind these long-lived organizations and build a discipline of shareable knowledge that will help contemporary institutions, companies, and governments develop into robust, long-lasting structures. In turn, we hope these institutions will be better equipped to address civilizational-scale problems with multi-generational thinking.

Reporter and writer Nathaniel Rich delves deep into conversation with [Revive & Restore](https://reviverestore.org/)'s Ryan Phelan and Ben Novak to discuss his newest book [_Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade_](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780374106034), which attempts to come to terms with the massive changes that are underway on our planet, and how humans can better understand our role to caretake, conserve and thoughtfully manage our relationship with nature for the long term. From [_Losing Earth_](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html) to the film [_Dark Waters_](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9071322/) (adapted from his writing), Nathaniel Rich’s stories have come to define the way we think of contemporary ecological narrative. In Second Nature, he asks what it means to live in an era of terrible responsibility. The question is no longer, _How do we return to the world that we’ve lost?_ It is, _What world do we want to create in its place?_

A compelling case can be made that we are in the early stages of another tech and economic boom in the next 30 years that will help solve our era’s biggest challenges like climate change, and lead to a societal transformation that will be understood as civilizational change by the year 02100. Peter Leyden has built the case for this extremely positive yet plausible scenario of the period from 02020 to 02050 as a sequel to the Wired cover story and book he co-authored with Long Now cofounder Peter Schwartz 25 years ago called [_The Long Boom: The Future History of the World 1980 to 2020_](https://www.wired.com/1997/07/longboom/). His latest project, [_The Transformation_](https://medium.reinvent.net//), is an optimistic analysis on what lies ahead, based on deep interviews with 25 world-class experts looking at new technologies and long-term trends that are largely positive, and could come together in surprisingly synergistic ways.

Jason Tester asks us to see the powerful potential of "queering the future" - how looking at the future through a lens of difference and openness can reveal unexpected solutions to wicked problems, and new angles on innovation. Might a queer perspective hold some of the keys to our seemingly intractable issues? Tester brings his research in strategic foresight, speculative design work, and understanding of the activism and resiliency of LGBTQ communities together as he looks toward the future. Can we learn new ways of thinking, and thriving, from the creative approaches and adaptive strategies that have emerged from these historically marginalized groups?

Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, journalist James Nestor questions the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function, breathing. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary specialists to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe. His inquiry leads to the understanding that breathing is in many ways as important as what we eat, how much we exercise, or whatever genes we’ve inherited.

Nadia Eghbal is particularly interested in infrastructure, governance, and the economics of the internet - and how the dynamics of these subjects play out in software, online communities and generally living life online. Eghbal, who interviewed hundreds of developers while working to improve their experience at GitHub, argues that modern open source offers us a model through which to understand the challenges faced by online creators. Her new book, [_Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software_](https://press.stripe.com/working-in-public), is about open source developers and what they tell us about the evolution of our online social spaces. Eghbal sees open source code as a form of public infrastructure that requires maintenance, and that offers us a model through which to understand the challenges faced by online creators on all platforms.

Human beings have an astonishing evolutionary gift: agile imaginations that can shift in an instant from thinking on a scale of seconds to a scale of years or even centuries. The need to draw on our capacity to think long-term has never been more urgent, whether in areas such as public health care, to deal with technological risks, or to confront the threats of an ecological crisis. What can we do to overcome the tyranny of the now? The drivers of short-termism threaten to drag us over the edge of civilizational breakdown, while ways to think long-term are drawing us towards a culture of longer time horizons and responsibility for the future of humankind. Creating a cognitive toolkit for challenging our obsession with the here and now offers conceptual scaffolding for answering one of the most important questions of our time: How can we be good ancestors? \---Roman Krznaric Roman Krznaric is a public philosopher who writes about the power of ideas to change society. His newest book on the history and future of long-term thinking is [_The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking_](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781615197309). Other books include [_Empathy_](https://smile.amazon.com/Empathy-Why-Matters-How-Get/dp/0399171401/ref=sr_1_3), [_The Wonderbox_](https://smile.amazon.com/Wonderbox-Curious-Histories-How-Live/dp/1846683939/ref=sr_1_1) and [_Carpe Diem Regained_](https://smile.amazon.com/Carpe-Diem-Regained-Vanishing-Seizing/dp/1783524936/ref=sr_1_1), which have been published in more than 20 languages. Krznaric founded the traveling [Empathy Museum](https://www.empathymuseum.com/) and is especially interested in the challenges of how we extend empathy to future generations. Roman Krznaric is also a [Long Now Research Fellow](https://longnow.org/people/associate/).

Responding to climate change by building hard infrastructures and favoring high-tech homogenous design, we are ignoring millennia-old knowledge of how to live in symbiosis with nature. Without implementing soft systems that use biodiversity as a building block, designs remain inherently unsustainable. There is a cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices, and beliefs designed to sustainably work with complex ecosystems. Watson's work reconnects with this sophisticated global body of knowledge. Julia Watson teaches Urban Design at Harvard and Columbia University and is author of [Lo-TEK. Design by Radical Indigenism](https://www.indiebound.org/search/book?keys=Lo-TEK.+Design+by+Radical+Indigenism) (02019). Her work focuses on experiential, landscape, and urban design, with an ethos towards global ecological change.

>"I have always felt I have an obligation to build the future I want to see. >We know that AI-powered cyber-physical systems (CPS) will scale in society. The challenge we face now is how we do that responsibly and sustainably? If we act proactively, we can avoid some of the negative impacts we have seen during other technological leaps. >We know that AI-powered cyber-physical systems (CPS) will scale in society. The challenge we face now is how we do that responsibly and sustainably? If we act proactively, we can avoid some of the negative impacts we have seen during other technological leaps. >We need to start creating now for that future 30 years hence, when we are completely embedded in both a digital and physical environment, and are experiencing a climate unrecognisable from the climate of today [...] for a future characterised by economic prosperity, social equality and wellbeing, and environmental sustainability." -- Genevieve Bell Genevieve Bell is an Australian anthropologist best known for her work at the intersection of cultural practice and technology development. Bell established the [3A Institute](https://3ainstitute.org/) (at the Australian National University College of Engineering and Computer Science) to focus on exploring how to bring together data science, design thinking and ethnography to drive new approaches in engineering; and to question of what it means to be human in a data-driven economy and world.

Craig Childs chronicles the last millennia of the Ice Age, the violent oscillations and retreat of glaciers, the clues and traces that document the first encounters of early humans, and the animals whose presence governed the humans chances for survival. With the cadence of his narrative moving from scientific observation to poetry, he reveals how much has changed since the time of mammoth hunters, and how little. Across unexplored landscapes yet to be peopled, readers will see the Ice Age, and their own age, in a whole new light. Craig Childs is a writer, wanderer and contributing editor at _High Country News_ , commentator for NPR's _Morning Edition_ , and teaches writing at University of Alaska and the Mountainview MFA at Southern New Hampshire University. His books include [Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780345806314 ) (02019), [Apocalyptic Planet](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780307476814) (02013) and [House of Rain](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316067546) (02008).

Throughout Peter Calthorpe's decade-spanning career in urban design, planning, and architecture, he has developed and practiced the key principles of [New Urbanism](https://www.cnu.org/resources/what-new-urbanism): that the most successful places are diverse in uses and users, are scaled to the pedestrian and human interaction, and are environmentally sustainable. Calthorpe developed the concept of Transit Oriented Development, a strategy that is now the foundation of many regional policies and city plans around the world. His work internationally has demonstrated that community design with a focus on environmental sustainability and human scale can be adapted throughout the globe. Most recently Calthorpe launched the urban-planning software [UrbanFootprint](https://urbanfootprint.com/) which models the diverse impacts of urban planning scenarios for designers and planners working for cities, businesses, public agencies and nonprofits.

"As a forecaster and Afrofuturist who imagines alternative futures from a Black Diaspora perspective, I think about long-term signals that will shape the next 10 to 100 years." ---Dr. Lonny J Avi Brooks Dr. Brooks develops and promotes a wider Afrocentric perspective that champions Black storytelling and imagination, to push beyond the colonial mindset into an expanded vision of possible futures. Through his work with the [Black Speculative Arts Movement](https://www.bsam-art.com/), [The Afrofuturist Podcast](http://www.theafrofuturistpodcast.com/) which he started with Ahmed Best, [Institute for the Future](https://www.iftf.org/home/), [Fathomers](https://www.fathomers.org/), [Dynamicland](https://dynamicland.org/) and others, Brooks aims to diversify and democratize the building of the future. Lonny J Avi Brooks is an associate professor in communication at California State University, East Bay. As the Co-Principal Investigator for the Long Term and Futures Thinking in Education Project, he has piloted the integration of futures thinking into the communication curriculum. As a leading voice of Afrofuturism 2.0, Brooks contributes prolifically to the field through diverse mediums including journals, conferences, anthologies, exhibits and festivals.

At the intersection of climate change, biodiversity loss, and food scarcity lies an unexpected and abundant resource: insects. [Brian Fisher](https://www.fisherlab.org/) has spent three decades documenting biodiversity in Madagascar, a nation off East Africa that's estimated to contain 5% of the world's total plant and animal life. Across the island, harsh economic realities force local people to choose between preserving their unique ecological heritage and clearing the landscape to make way for sustenance farming. To address the twin issues of malnutrition and habitat loss, Fisher with the [_California Academy of Sciences_](https://www.calacademy.org/) founded a Malagasy-based organization that manufactures protein-packed cricket powder. The edible insects alleviate pressure on endangered habitat while supplementing local diets, providing a model that can be replicated in other food-stressed areas around the world. Fisher is an unparalleled storyteller with updates from the cutting edge of conservation science — and the future of food. Dr. Brian Fisher is curator of entomology at the [California Academy of Sciences](https://www.calacademy.org/) and a world-renowned ant expert. Nicknamed the "Ant Man," Fisher has spent three decades documenting the island of Madagascar's beautiful biodiversity. Along the way, he's discovered over 1,000 new ant species. As he witnessed the biodiversity crisis unfold in Madagascar, Fisher began researching traditional insect-eating practices.

Dr. Laurance Doyle is an astrophysicist and principal investigator at SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) with expertise in diverse subjects including extrasolar planets, signal processing and communications theory. He has worked on image analysis from the Voyager mission and Halley's Comet, developed statistical methodologies to search for extrasolar planets, and is applying those tools to analyze complex patterns and search for meaning in animal communications.

Humans have consumed psychedelics for at least the last 10,000 years. The outlawing of psychedelics in most of the world in the 20th century didn’t stop that, but it did put an end to promising research into their psychotherapeutic applications to treat depression, addiction, PTSD, anxiety, and trauma. Today, we’re in the midst of a psychedelic renaissance, with some psychedelics fast on their way to becoming legal medicines. One of the key players behind this movement is Rick Doblin, Ph.D.. In 01986, he founded the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a non-profit research and educational organization that has developed the medical and legal framework for the use of psychedelics to treat mental health conditions. MAPS has distributed over $20 million to fund psychedelic research and education, and in 02017 won fast-tracked “Breakthrough Therapy” designation from the FDA for using MDMA-assisted psychotherapy to treat Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). With legalization now in sight, what is the future of psychedelic medicine? Rick Doblin, Ph.D., is the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He received his doctorate in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. His life’s work is to develop legal contexts for the beneficial uses of psychedelics.

Is it possible to preserve and read memories after someone has died? Robert McIntyre thinks it is, and that the technology is closer than most people realize. His company [_Nectome_](https://nectome.com/) is working on documenting the physical properties of memory formation, and studying ways to preserve those physical properties after death. McIntyre has already won the Brain Preservation Institutes' [_"Small Mammal"_](https://www.brainpreservation.org/small-mammal-announcement/) & [_"Large Mammal"_](https://www.brainpreservation.org/large-mammal-announcement/) prizes for preserving a full brain down to the synaptic level, and is now taking the next steps in figuring out how to decode those synapses. These are early experiments, but this is the type of work that will be required if we are someday able to preserve a mind and memories past biological death. Robert McIntyre is a former AI researcher at MIT, where he worked with Marvin Minsky, Patrick Winston, and Gerald Sussman studying the role of embodiment in AI. He left MIT in 02015 to compete for the Brain Preservation Prizes, and is currently CEO of Nectome, a company he founded to further develop brain preservation technology.

Companies that operate with a long-term mindset tend to outperform their peers over time. But the pressure to achieve short-term quarterly gains often works against longer-term sustainable growth, and can push even the most visionary company into a short-term mindset. In 02019, the Long-Term Stock Exchange was approved as the country’s 14th and newest stock exchange. It offers a new framework for companies to raise capital while keeping their focus on long-term results. By requiring participating companies to accept a set of governance standards and incentive systems that deprioritize the short-term, the Long-Term Stock Exchange hopes to reward investments and business strategies that focus on a longer time horizon. Eric Ries is the founder and CEO of Long-Term Stock Exchange. He created the Lean Startup methodology and is author of _The Lean Startup_ and _The Startup Way_. Ries founded IMVU and served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Business School, IDEO, and Pivotal.

The future is a kind of history that hasn’t happened yet. The past is a kind of future that has already happened. The present moment vanishes before it can be described. Language, a human invention, lacks the power to fully adhere to reality. We live in a very short now and here, since the flow of events in spacetime is mostly closed to human comprehension. But we have to say something about the future, since we have to live there. So what can we say? Being “futuristic” is a problem in metaphysics; it’s about getting language to adhere to an unknowable reality. But the futuristic quickly becomes old-fashioned, so how can the news stay news? [Bruce Sterling](https://www.wired.com/category/beyond_the_beyond/) is a futurist, journalist, science-fiction author, and culture critic. He is the author of more than 20 books including ground-breaking science ficiton and non-fiction about hackers, design and the future. He was the editor in 01986 of Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986) which brought the cyberpunk science fiction sub-genre to a much wider audience. He previous spoke for Long Now about ["The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole"](https://longnow.org/seminars/02004/jun/11/the-singularity-your-future-as-a-black-hole/) in 02004. His [Beyond the Beyond](http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/) blog on Wired.com is now in its 15th year. His most recent book is [_Pirate Utopia_](https://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Utopia-Bruce-Sterling/dp/1616962364).

[Fred Lyon](http://www.fredlyon.com/) is a time traveler with a camera and tales to tell. At 94-years-old, this former LIFE magazine photographer and fourth generation San Franciscan has an eye for the city and stories to match. We showed photos from Fred's books [_San Francisco, Portrait of a City: 1940-1960_](https://www.papress.com/html/product.details.dna?isbn=9781616892661 "San Francisco, Portrait of a City 1940-1960") and [_San Francisco Noir_](https://www.papress.com/html/product.details.dna?isbn=9781616896515 "San Francisco Noir"), and images spanning his diverse career. In conversation he discusses his art, work, and life; recollections of old friends like Herb Caen and Trader Vic Bergeron; and more, sharing his unique perspective after nearly a century in San Francisco. Fred Lyon's career began in the early 01940's and has spanned news, architecture, advertising, wine and food photography. In the golden years of magazine publishing his picture credits were everywhere from LIFE to VOGUE and beyond. These days find him combing his picture files for galleries, publishers and print collectors. He has been called _San Francisco's Brassa i_. He's also been compared to Cartier Bresson, Atget and Andre Kertez, but all with a San Francisco twist. That's fine with this lifelong native who happily admits his debt to those icons.

The ambition to think on the scale of thousands, millions, even billion of years emerged in the 19th century. Historian and author [Caroline Winterer](https://history.stanford.edu/people/caroline-winterer) chronicles how the concept of “deep time” has inspired and puzzled thinkers in cognitive science, art, geology (and elsewhere) to become one of the most influential ideas of the modern era. [Caroline Winterer](https://history.stanford.edu/people/caroline-winterer) is Anthony P. Meier Family Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Stanford Humanities Center. She is an American historian, with special expertise in American thought and culture. Her most recent book is _American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason_. Other books include _The Mirror of Antiquity: American Women and the Classical Tradition, 1750-1900_ , and _The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910_. She has received fellowships from among others the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Humanities Center. Her writing appears in numerous publications and academic journals. For mapping the social network of Benjamin Franklin she received an American Ingenuity Award from the Smithsonian Institution.

As the world is becoming more technologically connected, finding time for oneself and face-to-face connections is becoming increasingly difficult. Many of our talks at Long Now have aimed to help expand our collective now by centuries or even millennia, but what about our personal present? [ _Tiffany Shlain's_](http://www.tiffanyshlain.com/) new book [_24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day A Week_](https://www.24sixlife.com/) discusses one way to slow down and be more engaged: a technological shabbat, or day of rest. She explains some of the neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and history of this 3000 year old concept, and how it can help promote creativity in our busy world. Honored by Newsweek as one of the “Women Shaping the 21st Century,” Tiffany Shlain is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, founder of The Webby Awards and author of _24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day A Week_. Tiffany’s films and work have received over 80 awards and distinctions including being selected for the Albert Einstein Foundation _Genius:100 Visions of the Future_. She lectures worldwide on the relationship between technology and humanity.

What does practical long-term thinking look like? Bina Venkataraman’s new book, [_The Optimist's Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age_](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780735219472), brings this abstract question to life. Through a series of anecdotes and case studies that draw from her background in public policy, climate change strategy, and journalism, Venkataraman explores pragmatic tactics that can help us think more clearly about our long-term future. Bina Venkataraman is the editorial page editor of _The Boston Globe_. Before joining the _Globe_ , she served as a senior adviser for climate change innovation in the Obama White House, was the director of Global Policy Initiatives at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and taught in the Program on Science, Technology, and Society at MIT.

Recent data shows damage from climate change rapidly increasing. There are many scientifically proposed methods (from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.K. Royal Society, and the American Geophysical Union among others) for directly reducing atmospheric heat. Yet to date there are still no formal research programs or capabilities to further explore these geoengineering ideas. What are the potential risks and benefits? How do we balance this effort vs. emissions reduction and restoring the natural system? Kelly Wanser of [SilverLining](https://www.silverlining.ngo) discusses her work advocating, educating and coordinating research on this important effort to combat climate change. Kelly Wanser, as Executive Director of [SilverLining](https://www.silverlining.ngo), helps drive research that will ensure safe pathways for climate for people and ecosystems within the coming decade. She works to accelerate adoption of technologies that help us understand and manage climate as a complex systems problem. Ms. Wanser works closely with leading scientists, engineers, technologists and government leaders on efforts to increase research and accelerate progress on reducing atmospheric heat. She testified before the U.S. House Space, Science and Technology Committee as part of a panel on "Geoengineering: Innovation, Research, and Technology." She serves as Board Director for BioCarbon Engineering, who use drone and AI technology to help restore ecosystems, and is a Senior Advisor to BlackBirch, whose hyper-local data helps companies manage weather risk.

Millennia before engineering or software, robots and artificial intelligence were brought to life in Greek myths. The author of [_Gods and Robots Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology_](https://press.princeton.edu/titles/14162.html) traces the link between technology and tyranny from modern day concerns over AI to back to antiquities fear of beings were "made, not born.” [Adrienne Mayor](https://web.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Mayor.html) is a folklorist and historian of ancient science who investigates natural knowledge contained in pre-scientific myths and oral traditions. She has been at Stanford University since 02006; [_Gods and Robots_](https://press.princeton.edu/titles/14162.html) (2018) is her most recent book. Her other books include _The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times_ (2000); _Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World_ (2003); _The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women_ (2014); and a biography of Mithradates, _The Poison King_ (2010), a National Book Award finalist. She is a 02018-19 Berggruen Fellow at the [Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences](http://casbs.stanford.edu/) (CASBS), co-sponsors of this talk. While at CASBS she is continuing her investigations about how imagination is a link between myths about technology and science. Other projects include researching interdisciplinary topics in geomythology, to discover natural knowledge and scientific realities embedded in mythological traditions about nature.

[_Annalee Newitz's_](https://www.techsploitation.com/) new novel, [_The Future of Another Timeline_](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765392121), is about time travelers in an edit war over history. But it's also about using stories to change the course of civilization. Annalee discusses the idea of time travel, as well as the extensive scientific and historical research they did for the novel. Annalee Newitz writes science fiction and nonfiction. They are the author of the recent novel _The Future of Another Timeline_. Their previous novel, _Autonomous_ , was nominated for the Nebula and Locus Awards, and winner of the Lambda Literary Award. As a science journalist, they are a contributing opinion writer for _The New York Times_ , and have a monthly column in _New Scientist_. They have published in _The Washington Post_ , _Slate_ , _Popular Science_ , _Ars Technica_ , _The New Yorker_ , and _The Atlantic_ , among others. They are also the co-host of the Hugo Award-winning podcast [_Our Opinions Are Correct._](https://www.ouropinionsarecorrect.com/) They were the founder of _io9_ and served as the editor-in-chief of _Gizmodo_.

If we use AI to write our favorite music for us, will we lose the ability to write music ourselves? If an AI coach keeps divorced parents from arguing by text, can they get along without it? If the only novels and screenplays that get a green light are the ones that AI believes match up with past hits, will we wind up reading and watching the same thing over and over? In this conversation, NBC’s [_Jacob Ward_](https://jacobward.com), described the loop: the endless feedback cycle of pattern-recognition that threatens to collapse the complexity of human behavior into a predictable set of patterns across politics, entertainment, relationships, and art itself. Why is the loop so powerful? Why do companies keep empowering it? And what can we, as private citizens, do to resist its pull? Jacob Ward is a Berggruen Fellow at [_Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences_](https://casbs.stanford.edu) (CASBS), co-sponsor of this talk. Jacob Ward is technology correspondent for NBC News, where he reports on-air for Nightly News with Lester Holt, MSNBC, and The TODAY Show. The former editor-in-chief of Popular Science magazine, Ward was Al Jazeera’s science and technology correspondent from 02013 to 02018, and has hosted investigative documentaries for Discovery, National Geographic, and PBS. As a writer, Ward has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, and many other publications. His ten-episode Audible podcast, Complicated, discusses humanity’s most difficult problems, and he’s the host of an upcoming four-hour public television series, “Hacking Your Mind,” about human decision making and irrationality. Ward is a 02018-19 Berggruen Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, where he’s writing The Loop: Decision Technology and How to Resist It, due for publication by Hachette Book Group in 02020. The book explores how artificial intelligence and other decision-shaping technologies will amplify good and bad human instincts.

Andrew McAfee draws on a wide range of evidence to show that the world is already on the right track toward long-term health when it combines 1) technological progress, 2) capitalism, 3) responsive government, and 4) public awareness. That blend demonstrably gets humanity “more from less.” It dematerializes the economy and decouples it from exploiting nature while increasing prosperity for ever more people. McAfee argues that dematerialization is occurring because of the combination of capitalism and tech progress (especially progress with digital technologies). Contested markets provide the motive, and tech progress the opportunity, to save money by swapping bits for atoms throughout the economy. But competition and computers don't automatically deal with pollution or protect threatened ecosystems. Two other forces are necessary--public awareness and responsive government. When all four are present, societies can tread more lightly on the Earth and grow in confidence that both humanity and nature can thrive together into the future. The reality of what works departs from every ideology out there. It also makes clear what needs to be further improved in the places where it’s working, such as the US, and what needs to be introduced in the places where it’s not working yet. Andrew McAfee is a research scientist at MIT‘s Sloan School of Management and cofounder of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. He is the author of _More From Less_ (2019) and co-author (with Erik Brynjolfsson) of _Machine, Platform, Crowd_(2017) and _The Second Machine Age_ (2014).

From the cultivation of the first crops to the founding of modern states, the human story is the story of environmental forces, from plate tectonics and climate change, to atmospheric circulation and ocean currents. Professor [_Lewis Dartnell_](http://lewisdartnell.com/en-gb) dove into the planet’s deep past, where history becomes science, to explore a web of connections that underwrites our modern world, and that can help us face the challenges of the future. Lewis Dartnell is a Professor of Science Communication at the University of Westminster. Before that, he completed his biology degree at the University of Oxford and his PhD at UCL, and then worked as the UK Space Agency research fellow at the University of Leicester, studying astrobiology and searching for signs of life on Mars. He has won several awards for his science writing and contributes to the Guardian, The Times, and New Scientist. He is also the author of three books. He lives in London, UK.

From kings and philosophers to craftsmen and inventors, horology has been prized as an extraordinary marriage between art and science. Antiquarian Horologist Brittany Nicole Cox shared her unique experience with objects born from this lineage. We traced their origins to discover how these objects serve as critical mirrors in a world of accelerated discovery. Her lifelong passion for horology has seen her through nine years in higher education where she earned her WOSTEP, CW21, and SAWTA watchmaking certifications, two clockmaking certifications, and a Masters in the Conservation of Clocks and Related Dynamic Objects from West Dean College, UK. In 2015 she opened [Memoria Technica](https://mechanicalcurios.com), an independent workshop where she teaches, practices guilloché, and specializes in the conservation of automata, mechanical magic, mechanical music, and complicated clocks and watches. Her original work has been exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York and she is currently working on a series of bestiary automata inspired by illuminated texts and a manuscript to be published by Penguin Press.

Big Data promises unparalleled insights, but the larger the data, the harder they are to find. The key to unlocking them was discovered by mathematicians in the 18th century. A modern mathematician explains how to find patterns in data with new algorithms for old math. Gurjeet Singh is Chief AI Officer and co-founder of [Symphony AyasdiAI](https://www.ayasdi.com). He leads a technology movement that emphasizes the importance of extracting insight from data, not just storing and organizing it. Beginning with his tenure as a graduate student in Stanford’s Mathematics Department he has developed key mathematical and machine learning algorithms for Topological Data Analysis (TDA) and their applications. Before starting Ayasdi, he worked at Google and Texas Instruments. Dr. Singh holds a Technology degree from Delhi University and a Computational Mathematics Ph.D. from Stanford. He serves on the Technology Advisory Board at HSBC and on the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Technology Advisory Committee. He was named to Silicon Valley Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” list in 02015. Gurjeet lives in Palo Alto with his wife and two children and develops multi-legged robots in his spare time.

Coming to the fore in this century is Asian perspective on everything. A thrilling place to watch the shift is in art. Extraordinary contemporary art from all over the world, especially Asia, has been collected for the new world-class museum in Hong Kong called M+. The massive museum won’t open for a year or two, but a rich sample of the collection as well as insight on why it was collected for display in Hong Kong, will be offered by Suhanya Raffel, Executive Director of M+. Before her appointment in 2016 to run M+, Suhanya Raffel was Deputy Director and Director of Collections at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia, and Acting Director of the Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art. This SALT talk was arranged as part of the partnership between The Long Now Foundation and the Asia Society Northern California.

The invisible backbone of our food system is a man-made, distributed, and perpetual winter of refrigeration we've built for our food to live in. It has remade our entire relationship with food, for better and in some ways for worse. The time has come for us all to explore the mysteries of the artificial cryosphere. We need to understand refrigeration's scope and impact in order to take stock of what’s at stake and make sure that the many benefits of our network of thermal control outweigh the enormous costs. Nicola Twilley is writing the first comprehensive look at the global cold chain, due out in 02019. [Nicola Twilley](https://twitter.com/nicolatwilley) is a frequent contributor to [The New Yorker magazine](https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/nicola-twilley) and a co-host of the podcast "[Gastropod](https://gastropod.com)." She is at work on two books: one about refrigeration and the other on quarantine. She blogs at [EdibleGeography.com](http://www.ediblegeography.com).

“Cities were the first Internet,” says archaeologist Monica Smith, because they were the first permanent places where strangers met in large numbers for entertainment, commerce, and romance. And the function and form of cities, she notes, have remained remarkably constant over their 6,000 years of history so far. Modern city dwellers would quickly find their way around any city in the past, given our shared architecture of broad avenues, monumental structures, and densely crowded residences. What we learn from examining the long history of cities is what makes them so freeing and empowering for humans and humanity. Density has always been crucial. So has infrastructure, skill specialization, cultural diversity, intense trade with other cities, an economy of acquiring and discarding objects, the delights of fashion and art, religious focus and political focus, intellectual ferment, and technological innovation. The digital internet has not replaced cities, nor is it likely that anything else will, Smith proposes, for the next 6,000 years. Monica L. Smith is an anthropology professor and also a professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainabilityat UCLA. She has done archeological fieldwork in India, Bangladesh, Madagascar, Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, Italy, and England. Her new book is [_Cities: The First 6,000 Years_](https://smile.amazon.com/Cities-First-6-000-Years/dp/073522367X/ref=sr_1_1).