Long Now

Tim O'Reilly, the visionary founder of O'Reilly Media, explores the intricate relationship between technology and society. He discusses how our narratives shape understanding and the need to redefine our 'maps.' O'Reilly challenges the notion of platform capitalism and emphasizes decentralized systems as innovation drivers. He shares insights on future tools, the impact of AI, and the vital role of government in fostering innovation, all while championing a long-term perspective on technological change.

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?

A special night of short talks about the long history and scientific background behind a most persistent malady. And the drinks that can help keep it at bay. Featuring returning Interval speakers James Holland Jones (Stanford), James Nestor (Deep), Kara Platoni (We Have the Technology), The Interval’s Beverage Director: Jennifer Colliau, and more.

Rick Prelinger uncovers the diverse histories of Bay Area telecommunications infrastructure: telephone, radio, television, data, image and sound. A tour of technologies, dead and flourishing, that overlay, underlay and penetrate us all.

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.

Before us, after us, and without our realizing it: geology, ecology, and biology uniquely record human activity. Geoscientist Miles Traer, co-host of the podcast _[Generation Anthropocene](http://www.genanthro.com)_ uncovers the many “natures" of the San Francisco Bay Area that exist beneath our feet.

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.