How Long is Now?

One entity I keep an eye on is The Long Now Foundation

These people are into some very interesting things. They're building a 10,000 year clock, preserving the world's languages (including many that would otherwise disappear), and they have a series of monthly talks, Seminars About Long-Term Thinking (SALT), featuring UT favorites like Vernor Vinge, Brian Eno, Jared Diamond, Ray Kurzweil, Bruce Sterling and scores of other forward thinkers. I sub to the podcast but all of the talks are also available in their archive.

(helpful hint: the Vorbis (.ogg) files in the SALT archive are the best quality and listenable with our recommended media player. VLC plays just about everything with a minimum of hassle and intrusion. Five Stars, you'll never go back to WIMP)

One interesting note: in 2006 Will Wright and Brian Eno did a SALT on generative creation which was pretty cool. Will Wright, best known as the creator of The Sims, will be releasing Spore later this year. I'm not huge into videogames (as evidenced by my anachronistic labeling; 'gaming' still means D&D to me) but Spore is worth a scan, gamer or not.