"the long view" entries

Time Zoom: Welcome to the Anthropocene

Advertising last week's monthly Long Now Seminar on Long Term Thinking, "Zooming Out In Time," Stewart Brand wrote: "How can we detect and understand oncoming crises in time to avert them?" asks John Baez. Take a serious, deep–structural problem such as climate change. How serious is it, really? The way you find out is zoom out in time. The nature…

China: Giant Contradictions

Long time China watcher Orville Schell spoke at the Long Now Foundation seminars on long term thinking on Friday night. (If you'd like to be notified of future seminars, join the mailing list.) As usual, Stewart Brand summarized the talk, and has given permission for his summary to be republished here. The essence: "These days you cannot think usefully about…

David Brower: Monumental

Over on WorldChanging, Alex Steffen has an encomium to David Brower, founder of the modern Sierra Club, and a recommendation for the new documentary on Brower, Monumental. WorldChanging is one of the sites I follow regularly, and I take Alex's recommendations seriously….

Only Connect

In his usual inimitable way, Stewart Brand and crew over at The Long Now Foundation put together a thought provoking evening as part of the monthly seminars on long term thinking. Originally titled "The Long War on Terror," in Stewart Brand's retelling of the John Rendon's talk, the title becomes "Only Connect." This title keys off one of the speaker's…

Tropical Arctic in Distant Past

The NY Times has a thought-provoking article about global warming. According to three studies of the arctic seabed floor that were just published in Nature, 55 million years ago, the arctic was at a temperature of 74 degrees Fahrenheit. (They don't say how hot that made the rest of the world, but it must have been pretty steamy!) Obviously, these…