The Long Now Foundation

How will AI shape our understanding of ourselves? Join us next week for a Long Now Talk from K Allado-McDowell on Neural Media, February 25, 7 PM at the Cowell Theater at Fort Mason Center. K's work as a technologist, writer, and musician has explored how our technocultural media regimes shape our creativity and self-perception. Against the backdrop of climate change and mass extinction, neural media like AI present unique challenges and opportunities. K has pioneered neural media, founding the Artists + Machine Intelligence Program at Google and writing books and composing operas in collaboration with non-human agents. Their work has tested the limits and potentials of these new technological forces. K Allado-McDowell’s work confronts those opportunities with deep engagement, forging a path ahead to a merging of planetary, computational, and human perspectives. Learn more: https://hubs.ly/Q037Dc5D0

When you feel the future, how do you share that feeling in order to build community? https://lnkd.in/e7fTqNri Over the past quarter-century, Ahmed Best — first as an actor, musician, and performer, and later as an Afrofuturist scholar and lecturer — has worked to answer that question. Drawing on his experiences as a cast member on the award-winning percussion performance Stomp, as Jar-Jar Binks, the ground-breaking first major CGI character actor in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, and as a lecturer at the Stanford D School and one of the leaders of the AfroRithms Futures Group. By bringing people together through electrifying performance and thought-provoking conversation, Best’s work has been able to make the future not just an abstract, intellectual consideration but something that can be felt in collective experience. The core of Ahmed’s argument? Feeling is a form of communication in itself, beyond words — and only by taking action and sharing our feelings of the future with each other in our communities can we create the futures we want for ourselves. Using a diverse range of creative and imaginative tactics, Best incorporates play and motion in order to help audiences Feel The Future. In his Long Now Talk, Best is joined on stage in conversation with Long Now Board Member Lisa Kay Solomon. As a Futurist in Residence at the Stanford D School, Solomon teaches classes like “Inventing the future” and “View from the future,” to help leaders and learners learn skills to anticipate and adapt to increasingly complex futures. Lisa recently joined the board of the Long Now Foundation, and is passionate about helping infusing futures thinking and practices into both classrooms and board rooms. Watch Ahmed Best's Long Now Talk: Feel the Future https://hubs.ly/Q03d-dZR0

We find ourselves in a “pre-paradigmatic moment” in which our technology has outpaced our theories of what to do with it. The task of philosophy today is to catch up. Watch Philosopher of Science and Technology Benjamin Bratton’s Long Now Talk on the philosophy of planetary computation: https://hubs.ly/Q03cRJmz0

To face down the planetary challenges of our time, we need a new Logic for the Future. Join public policy expert Stephen Heintz and science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson for their Long Now Talk, starting now: https://hubs.ly/Q03cF9Sh0

In an age of turbulence—with over 180 violent conflicts globally, climate change accelerating past thresholds, and authoritarianism on the rise—our international governance systems are proving dangerously inadequate. The institutions designed for the mid-20th century cannot address the complex challenges of the 21st. This is why Stephen Heintz's "A Logic for the Future: International Relations in the Age of Turbulence" published by the The Long Now Foundation represents essential reading for anyone concerned with global governance and collective action. As Peter Drucker noted, "The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not turbulence itself; rather, it is acting with yesterday's logic." Heintz builds on this insight to analyze how we might update our approach to international relations through 10 building blocks for a new global framework. What makes this article valuable is its balance of pragmatism and vision. It acknowledges which elements of our current system remain relevant, which require revision, and which must be reimagined. The vision includes: 1. Co-creating a more equitable system that genuinely includes the "global majority" (6.5 billion people across Africa, Asia, and Latin America) 2. Remaking the United Nations through democratic reforms while supplementing it with nimble networks and polylateral arrangements 3. Evolving the nation-state model by devolving authority to local governments while strengthening planetary governance 4. Prioritizing diplomacy through investment in a new generation of diplomats trained in cooperative problem-solving 5. Reforming trade and investment to prioritize global public goods 6. Strengthening democracy as the cornerstone of effective governance 7. Establishing a U.S.-China Secretariat to manage the century's most consequential bilateral relationship 8. Codifying rights of nature and future generations 9. Transforming U.S. global leadership from dominance to partnership 10. Building institutional ecosystems capable of addressing existential threats For those working on open-source solutions for global public goods, this article provides invaluable context. It reinforces why decentralized, collaborative approaches to global challenges are not just desirable but necessary in a multi-polar world where power is increasingly diffused. While some may dismiss these ideas as idealistic, the alternative—continuing with systems we know are failing—represents the greater folly. As Heintz writes, "Our legacy must not be one of inattention to the rising tides of crisis. Our children deserve to inherit a world structured with a logic that is relevant to their futures." We encourage you to read the article and consider how its insights might inform your own work. The challenges before us demand nothing less than reinvention of our global governance systems—and that process begins with expanding our imagination of what's possible. https://lnkd.in/dThfMyrj

At a time when there is greater capacity for stretch in our conceptions of global relations and thinking about the international system, join The Long Now Foundation for a conversation with science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson and Rockefeller Brothers Fund CEO Stephen Heintz on imagining—and realizing—solutions to urgent planetary challenges.

"Our legacy must not be one of inattention to the rising tides of crisis. Our children deserve to inherit a world structured with a logic that is relevant to their futures." To confront the intersecting crises of our time — climate change, geopolitical tension, and the potential risks of new technology — we need a new logic for the future: a complete and coherent worldview as adapted to our present moment as the post-01945 international order was for its own. Long Now Talks speaker Stephen Heintz offers a vision for this logic. https://hubs.ly/Q039R4YV0

Was Jesus a magic mushroom? The answer is, perhaps surprisingly, a longer and more complex story than it may first appear. In Long Now Ideas, John P. Last goes deep into the intertwined histories of psychedelics and spirituality. https://hubs.ly/Q038Ty-t0

Happening Now: K Allado McDowell's Long Now Talk on how AI will reshape our understandings of our creativity and ourselves. Watch the livestream: https://lnkd.in/gyWuV6yC

I have found K Allado-McDowell to be one of the most fascinating contemporary creative philosophers at the intersection of AI, creativity, and ecology. Join me and The Long Now Foundation for their Long Now Talk, “On Neural Media,” next Tuesday, Feb. 25th at 7 PM PT at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco. TICKETS BELOW, and afterparty to follow at The Interval — let me know if you can make it, and feel free to invite friends! ??