The Clock Of The Long Now: Time and Responsibility Book

"How do we make long-term thinking automatic and common," asks Stewart Brand, "instead of difficult and rare?" Or, to put it another way, how does one get people to develop a natural perspective of their present moment that extends beyond a few days in either direction? The Clock of the Long Now describes a potential solution from the Long Now Foundation, a digerati braintrust co-chaired by Brand, the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog. The other chair, computer scientist Daniel Hillis, gave the group their initial premise in a 1995 Wired magazine article dreaming of a "Millennium Clock" that would measure time on a 10,000-year scale, and musician Brian Eno, who came up with the concept of the "Long Now." Although there is a lot of discussion of the clock itself--where to build it? how to design it?--Brand's main theme is about accepting responsibility for the long-term consequences of our actions. "We are not the culmination of history," he warns, "and we are not start-over revolutionaries; we are in the middle of civilisation's story ... We don't know what's coming. We do know we're in it together." The Clock of the Long Now is a deceptively short book, written in a friendly, at times conversational style. It can be read in an afternoon, but just might make you think for a lifetime. Maybe even a few lifetimes. --Ron Hogan, Amazon.comRead More