Long Now

Latest Episodes:

Rick Prelinger: Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 4 Dec 04, 2009

Show notes

### Gas Stations, Not Flowers The fourth incarnation of _Lost Landscapes of San Francisco_ played to a sold out house at the Herbst Theater with the chanteuse Suzanne Ramsey opening the evening with a selection of historical San Francisco songs including the 01926 gem [Masculine Women Feminine Men](http://www.heptune.com/masculin.html). Rick Prelinger prefaced the footage with a brief introduction to his archive, process, and most of all a request to go into your mother's attic to pull out any films that feature San Francisco or the Bay Area. The archive needs your footage. Prelinger then queued up over seventy minutes of historic San Francisco footage starting with a heart stopping landing by an auto-gyro in City Hall Plaza. As always the audience was encouraged to participate by shouting both questions and answers posed by each segment. This year they were also bolstered by a trio of San Francisco city history buffs: [Gray Brechin](http://www.graybrechin.com/), [Ed Holmes](http://laughingsquid.com/31st-annual-saint-stupids-day-parade-on-april-1st-in-san-francisco/) and [Woody LaBounty](http://www.carville-book.com/author.php), each with a particular angle on the city. New to the collection this year was wonderful multi-generational family footage from the Gee family who were also in the audience. In the question period at the end Stewart Brand asked what we should be doing now for the archivists of the future, Ricks answer, "shoot gas stations not flowers". Most archives and libraries put up access barriers in response to copyright laws. In contrast Rick has attacked the vast amount of work that is either out of copyright, or left in the ambiguous gray zones, like home movies. We have always been told that there is no economic case for archives, the [Prelinger Archive](http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger) and [Library](http://www.prelingerlibrary.org/) not only upends that notion, but proves that access is the key, not protection. Rick Prelinger's archive contains hundreds of historical films showing San Francisco and Northern California history, the history of technology and industry, and everyday life. For future Lost Landscapes programs, he's looking for films and footage showing San Francisco and Northern California history, especially home movies and material shot by hobbyists or amateurs. He's interested in material that can become part of his archives, and will consider paying to copy footage of historical interest. He's reachable at rick@well.com.

Sander van der Leeuw: The Archaeology of Innovation Nov 18, 2009

Show notes

### History of Innovation The development of human mental ability can be tracked through the progressive crafting of stone tools, Van der Leeuw explained. First we learned to shape an edge---a line---then the surface, then the whole volume of the tool, then the sophisticated sequence required to make a superb spear point. It took 2 million years. But by 300,000 years ago the human brain had developed a sufficiently complex short-term working memory to keep 7 (plus-or-minus 2) considerations in mind at once. We could handle problems of multi-dimensionality. The brain has not progressed since then, nor has needed to. The skills of innovation moved on from the biological brain to social constructs and modes of communication and information processing. That bootstrapping process continues to this day. The cave paintings show that cognitive agility reached the point of being able to reduce 3 dimensions to a representative 2 dimensions, for instance. By the Neolithic revolution of 10,000 years ago, we developed the ability to shape voids---the interior of pots, baskets, and houses. Tools could be made by assembling parts instead of just paring down blanks of stone or wood. Problem solving in agriculture began to span time, to be a form of investment. Towns and then cities became humanity's innovation engine. Symbols recorded in material form---tokens, accounting, and writing---spanned time and space. Unruly cities disciplined themselves with laws and administration. Then empires developed the ability to harvest the bounty of far-flung communities in the form of treasure, and that led to overreach. The Roman Empire was the first to degrade its world at the local climate level, and it collapsed. Around 1800, in Europe, energy constraints were finally conquered by the harvesting of fossil fuels. Humans only need 100 watts to survive, but every human now commands 10,000 watts. With that leverage we built a global civilization. The innovative power of urbanity has multiplied yet further with the coming of the Internet. But we have become "disturbance dependent." As our cities and density of communications grow, they create ever more difficult problems, for which we have to innovate ever more sophisticated solutions. Technology is "the biggest Ponzi scheme of all." As we become ever more adept at solving short-term problems, we shift the risk to long-term problems---such as climate change---which do not match the skills we have developed and know how to reward. We are headed into a trap of our own devising. To get out of it, if we can, will require a "battle with ourselves" to wholly redefine our social structures and institutions to master the long term.

Stewart Brand: Rethinking Green Oct 09, 2009

Show notes

### Globalizing Green Brand built his case for rethinking environmental goals and methods on two major changes going on in the world. The one that most people still don't take into consideration is that power is shifting to the developing world, where 5 out of 6 people live, where the bulk of humanity is getting out of poverty by moving to cities and creating their own jobs and communities (slums, for now). He noted that history has always been driven by the world's largest cities, and these years they are places like Mumbai, Lagos, Dhaka, Sao Paulo, Karachi, and Mexico City, which are growing 3 times faster and 9 times bigger than cities in the currently developed world ever did. The people in those cities are unstoppably moving up the "energy ladder" to high quality grid electricity and up the "food ladder" toward better nutrition, including meat. As soon as they can afford it, everyone in the global South is going to get air conditioning. The second dominant global fact is climate change. Brand emphasized that climate is a severely nonlinear system packed with tipping points and positive feedbacks such as the unpredicted rapid melting of Arctic ice. Warming causes droughts, which lowers carrying capacity for humans, and they fight over the diminishing resources, as in Darfur. It also is melting the glaciers of the Himalayan plateau, which feed the rivers on which 40% of humanity depends for water in the dry season---the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Mekong, Irrawaddy, Yangtze, and Yellow. Global warming has to be slowed by reducing the emission of greenhouse gases from combustion, but cities require dependable baseload electricity, and so far the only carbon-free sources are hydroelectric dams and nuclear power. Brand contrasted nuclear with coal-burning by comparing what happens with their waste products. Nuclear spent fuel is tiny in quantity, and you know exactly where it is, whereas the gigatons of carbon dioxide from coal burning goes into the atmosphere, where it stays for centuries making nothing but trouble. Brand declared that geological sequestering of nuclear waste has been proven practical and safe by the ten years of experience at the WIPP in New Mexico, and he paraded a series of new "microreactor" designs that offer a clean path for distributed micropower, especially in developing countries. Moving to genetically engineered food crops, Brand noted that they are a tremendous success story in agriculture, with Green benefits such as no-till farming, lowered pesticide use, and more land freed up to be wild. The developing world is taking the lead with the technology, designing crops to deal with the specialized problems of tropical agriculture. Meanwhile the new field of synthetic biology is bringing a generation of Green biotech hackers into existence. On the subject of bioengineering (direct intervention in climate), Brand suggested that we will have to follow of the example of beneficial "ecosystem engineers" such as earthworms and beavers and tweak our niche (the planet) toward a continuing life-friendly climate, using methods such a cloud-brightening with atomized seawater and recreating what volcanoes do when they pump sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, cooling the whole world. Green aversion to technologies such as nuclear and genetic engineering resulted from a mistaken notion that they are somehow "unnatural." "What we call natural and what we call human are inseparable," Brand concluded. "We live one life." PS. Long Now likes to include a pointer to related reading. As it happens, the whole ["Recommended Reading"](http://web.me.com/stewartbrand/DISCIPLINE_footnotes/Recommended_Reading.html) section of my book [_Whole Earth Discipline_](http://www.amazon.com/Whole-Earth-Discipline-Ecopragmatist-Manifesto/dp/0670021210/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255368079&sr=8-1/lono0a-20) is online, with 50 recommendations for books, magazines, and websites, with live links. It's at: [www.sbnotes.com](http://web.me.com/stewartbrand/DISCIPLINE_footnotes/Contents.html) **Interviews and Media** * Stewart Brand and Amory Lovins' debate about Nuclear Power on [NPR's _On Point_](http://onpoint.wbur.org/2009/10/21/brand-vs-lovins-on-nuclear-power) * Stewart Brand on [Newsweek's _Techtonic Shifts_](http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/techtonicshifts/archive/2009/10/21/stewart-brand-an-icon-of-environmentalism-talks-about-embracing-nuclear-power.aspx) * Review of __Whole Earth Discipline__ on [Worldchanging](http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010701.html) * Interview with Stewart Brand on [Huffington Post](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-kornbluth/what-stewart-brand-creato_b_329851.html)

Arthur Ganson: Machines and the Breath of Time Sep 14, 2009

Show notes

### Dancing chairs "You follow the feeling of the piece," Ganson explained, "and then wrestle it into physicality." As long as the idea is nonphysical, it is permanent; it becomes temporary as a physical device; and then it becomes permanent again in the mind of the viewer. As Ganson spoke, a tiny chair walked meditatively around and around on a rock on the right side of the stage, projected live onto a video screen. ([Thinking Chair](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-xx-tnxgKM&feature=channel).) No part in any of his kinetic art pieces is superfluous, he pointed out; everything functions. The piece should be crystal clear and also completely ambiguous. That's what allows each viewer to create their own story. He showed a video of "[Machine with Concrete](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q-BH-tvxEg)." On the left an electric motor drives a worm gear at 212 revolutions a minute. A sequence of twelve 50-to-1 gear reductions slows the rotation so far that the last gear, on the right, is set in concrete. It would take over two trillion years for that gear to rotate. "Intense activity on one end, quiet stillness on the other," Ganson said. "It's a duality I feel in my own being." The next video, "[Cory's Yellow Chair](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFG-Lk9c2CI)," showed a chair exploding into six pieces, which hover at a distance, then gently reassemble, and instantly explode again. Ganson said he wanted the chair pieces to explode at infinite speed, rest in stillness at the extreme, then reassemble gradually. The piece is stab at the question of "when is now?" Now is when the chair coalesces, but it doesn't last. Some of Ganson's machines inspire people to sit and watch them for hours. "[Machine With Oil](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__GhJl_UQg0)" does nothing but drench itself with lubrication all day long. In "[Margot's Other Cat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6aicIcQJvc)" a soaring chair is set in random motion by an unsuspecting cat. The cat's motion is utterly determined; the chair has its own life. During the Q&A, Alexander Rose asked the full-house audience how many of them of were makers of things. Ninety percent raised their hands in joy.

Wayne Clough: Smithsonian Forever Aug 17, 2009

Show notes

### The Smithsonian's long now [Note for those who mentally enunciate words while reading: the last name is pronounced "Cluff."] Secretary Clough reminded the audience that we own the Smithsonian, and what that amounts to is 19 museums and galleries containing 137 million objects, plus the National Zoo and 20 libraries. Each year the Smithsonian has 27 million visitors. In addition there are numerous research centers with activities in 88 countries. That's the Smithsonian's short now--it's current profile to fulfill its abiding mission to help society understand and remember itself. The Institution's long now reaches back quite a ways and hopes to reach into the future well beyond the 300 years of national history it represents so far. The greatest temporal reach comes from the one-sixth of all Smithsonian employees who engage in astronomy and astrophysics, operating such tools as the Kepler Telescope launched into orbit last March to discover remote planets that might harbor life and the Giant Magellan Telescope being built in Chile that will have the ten times the resolving power of the Hubble Space Telescope and may be able to examine the earliest remnants of the Big Bang fourteen billion years ago. Much of our understanding of current climate hazards is coming from paleoclimatology. Ice core studies give us 800,000 years of data, but stratigraphic study of leaves is yielding crucial information about what happened 55 million years ago when the Earth warmed drastically and suddenly in what is called the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Clough described his visit with Smithsonian researcher Scott Wing doing field work in Bighorn Basin, Wyoming, where he saw evidence of palm trees growing in the area when the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was three times what we have now, and the newly evolving horse was the size of cat because hot climates make for smaller animals. Clough sees the long-term role of the Smithsonian as working with the constant tension between the permanent and the ephemeral and the full exploration of what he called "collaborative long-term thinking." He ended with a quote from Smithsonian curator David Shayt: "There's an accurate perception that we are forever…, that we will care for and honor an object eternally. That perception of immortality is very precious to people."

Raoul Adamchak & Pamela Ronald: Organically Grown and Genetically Engineered: The Food of the Future Jul 28, 2009

Show notes

### Engineered organic Organic farming teacher Raoul began the joint presentation with a checklist for truly sustainable agriculture in a global context. It must: Provide abundant safe and nutritious food…. Reduce environmentally harmful inputs…. Reduce energy use and greenhouse gases…. Foster soil fertility…. Enhance crop genetic diversity…. Maintain the economic viability of farming communities…. Protect biodiversity…. and improve the lives of the poor and malnourished. (He pointed out that 24,000 a day die of malnutrition worldwide, and about 1 billion are undernourished.) Organic agriculture has made a good start on these goals, he said, with its focus on eliminating harmful pesticides, soluble synthetic fertilizers, and soil erosion. Every year in the world 300,000 deaths are caused by the pesticides of conventional agriculture, along with 3 million cases of harm. Organic farmers replace the pesticides with crop rotation, resilient varieties of plants, beneficial insects, and other techniques. But organic has limitations, he said. There are some pests, diseases, and stresses it can't handle. Its yield ranges from 45% to 97% of conventional ag yield. It is often too expensive for low-income customers. At present it is a niche player in US agriculture, representing only 3.5%, with a slow growth rate suggesting it will always be a niche player. Genetically engineered crops could carry organic farming much further toward fulfilling all the goals of sustainable agriculture, Raoul said, but it was prohibited as a technique for organic farmers in the standards and regulations set by the federal government in 2000. At this point plant geneticist Pam took up the argument. What distinguishes genetic engineering (GE) and precision breeding from conventional breeding, she said, is that GE and precision breeding work with just one or a few well-characterized genes, versus the uncertain clumps of genes involved in conventional breeding. And genes from any species can be employed. That transgenic capability is what makes some people nervous about GE causing unintended harm to human or ecological health. One billion acres have been planted so far with GE crops, with no adverse health effects, and numerous studies have showed that GE crops pose no greater risk of environmental damage than conventional crops. Genetic engineering is extremely helpful in solving some agricultural problems, though only some. Pam gave three examples, starting with cotton. About 25% of all pesticide use in the world is used to defeat the cotton bollworm. Bt cotton is engineered to express in the plant the same caterpillar-killing toxin as the common soil bacteria used by organic farmers,_Bacillus thuringiensis_. Bt cotton growers use half the pesticides of conventional growers. With Bt cotton in China, cases of pesticide poisoning went down by 75%. India's cotton yield increased by 80%. Pam pointed out that any too-successful technique used alone encourages pests to evolve around the technique, so the full panoply of "integrated pest management" needs always to be employed. Her second example was papayas in Hawaii, where the entire industry faced extinction from ringspot virus. A local genetic engineer devised way to put a segment of the virus genome into papayas, thereby effectively inoculating the fruit against the disease. The industry was saved, and most of the papayas we eat in California are GE. Rice is Pam's specialty at her lab in Davis. Half the world depends on rice. In flood-prone areas like Bangladesh, 4 million tons of rice a year are lost to flooding--enough to feed 30 million people. She helped engineer a flood-tolerant rice (it can be totally submerged for two weeks) called Sub1. At field trials in Asia farmers are getting three to five times higher yield over conventional rice. The cost of gene sequencing and engineering is dropping rapidly (toward $70 a genome), and our knowledge about how food crops function genetically is growing just as rapidly. That accelerating capability offers a path toward truly sustainable agriculture on a global scale. Returning to the stage, Raoul doubted that certified organic farmers would ever be allowed to use GE plants, and so he proposed a new certification program for "Sustainable Agriculture," that would include GE.

Paul Romer: A Theory of History, with an Application May 18, 2009

Show notes

### New Cities with New Rules This talk was the first in a series of public discussions of an idea that Romer has been working on for two years. His economic theory of history explains phenomena such as the constant improvement of the human standard of living by looking primarily at just two forms of innovative ideas: technology and rules. Technologies rearrange materials with ingenious recipes and formulas. More people create more technologies, which in turn generates more people. In recent decades technology has enabled the "demographic transition" which lowers birthrates and raises income per person even higher as population levels off. Rules structure the interactions between people. As population density increased, the idea of ownership became an important rule. A supporting rule for managing violations replaced the old idea of deadly vengeance with awarding damages instead: simply shifting value replaced destroying value. For the idea of open science, recognition replaced ownership as the main event, which means that whoever publishes first is most rewarded, and that accelerates science. Rules can amplify or stifle technological progress. China was the world leader in inventing new technologies until about a thousand years ago, when centralized dynastic rules slowed innovation almost to a stop. Romer notes that business keeps evolving as new companies introduce new rule sets. The good ideas are copied, and workers migrate from failing companies to the new and old ones where the new rules are working well. The same goes for countries. Starting about 1970, China took some of the effective rules of Hong Kong (which was managed from afar by England) and set up four special economic zones along the coast operating as imitation Hong Kongs. They worked so well that China rolled out the scheme for the whole country, and its Gross Domestic Product took off. "Hong Kong was the most successful economic development program in history." Romer suggests that we rethink sovereignty (respect borders, but maybe create new systems of administrative control); rethink citizenship (allowing perhaps for voice without residency as well as residency without voice); and rethink scale (instead of focussing on nations, focus on new cities.) If nations are willing to experiment along these lines, they can create new places, places that can give more people access to the kind of rules that they would like to live and work under, and places that can sustain the historical process of entry and innovation in national systems of rules. The idea is getting some traction in the developing world. This summer Romer will launch an institute and website for further exploration and eventual application of the idea. One miracle of cities is that they sometimes renew themselves brilliantly. This could be a whole new form of that.

Michael Pollan: Deep Agriculture May 05, 2009

Show notes

### Making farmers cool again Farming has become an occupation and cultural force of the past. Michael Pollan's talk promoted the premise - and hope - that farming can become an occupation and force of the future. In the past century American farmers were given the assignment to produce lots of calories cheaply, and they did. They became the most productive humans on earth. A single farmer in Iowa could feed 150 of his neighbors. That is a true modern miracle. "American farmers are incredibly inventive, innovative, and accomplished. They can do whatever we ask them, we just need to give them a new set of requirements." The benefit of a reformed food system, besides better food, better environment and less climate shock, is better health and the savings of trillions of dollars. Four out of five chronic diseases are diet-related. Three quarters of medical spending goes to preventable chronic disease. Pollan says we cannot have a healthy population, without a healthy diet. The news is that we are learning that we cannot have a healthy diet without a healthy agriculture. And right now, farming is sick. Pollan outlined what this recovery for American farmers and food producers should be. First a post-modern food system should be "resolarized." Right now it takes 10 calories of fossil fuel to manufacture 1 calorie of food on average, and 55 calories to produce 1 calorie of beef. If any industry should be solar-based it should be food, which was the "original solar economy." Instead, right now "we are eating oil." Cheap oil and farm policies subsidize the 5 main crops (and only those crops), upon which the rest of our cheap food system is based. These main crops are planted as monocultures, which require cheap pesticides and fertilizers and produce wastes that are all problems in themselves. Pollan's solution is not to dismantle the food system but to redirect it. Because of the long-term planning and learning that stewarding land requires, he believes subsidies of some type are essential for agriculture. Agriculture, he stated, should not be a freemarket. By picking the proper incentives we can re-localize, re-solarize, and revive the healing power of balanced farms and wholesome gardens. Governments should reward farmers for diversifying away from monocultures. Pollan gave a few examples of where this has worked at scale. They should be rewarded for growing cover crops with the benefit of reducing erosion. Rewarded for returning animals to the mix. Rewarded for the amount of carbon they sequester in soil. Rewarded for halting urban sprawl by keeping farmland intact. In fact farmland should find a similar status as wetlands; developers and communities get "credit" for retaining farmland. Farmers should be rewarded for localize food provision. If only 2% of government contracts for food (as in school lunch programs, or government-run hospitals) required that the food be produced within 100 miles, it would transform the food system. How might such change happen? Only if consumers and citizens demand it. One thing that might help is if web cams and images of the actual feed lot, or slaughterhouse, were required to be available for food that flowed through it. Imagine getting a carton of milk that showed not a metaphorical alpine meadow, but the real cages of the real dirty cows that produced that liter of milk. Or put a second calories count on labels, this one showing how many calories of energy it takes to deliver the item to you. The major problem with his vision? He says there are simply not enough farmers. Only 1 million now feed the US and other people of the world. Many more people, many more college educated people, many more innovators and entrepreneurs, and many more backyard gardeners need to produce this new food system. Start in educational programs, such as one promoted by Alice Waters, where kids learn to grow food, cook, and eat smarter. "Make lunch an academic subject." Follow the lead of Michelle Obama and make turning lawns into organic gardens fashionable, respectable. Make farms and farmers cool again.

Gavin Newsom & Stewart Brand: Cities and Time Apr 08, 2009

Show notes

### Sustainable Cities Mayor Newsom began with how moved he was by hosting the UN's World Environment Day in San Francisco in 2005. For that event, which was called "Green Cities - Plan for the Planet!", he invited 120 mayors from around the world. Days of intense discussion led to the publication of 21 policy principles for building permanently sustainable cities, in the areas of energy, waste, design, nature, transportation, health, and water. Cities, Newsom said, consume 75% of natural resources and are responsible for 75% of pollution. He became determined to help make San Francisco the Greenest city in the world. That can be accomplished only with a plethora of highly specific programs. The city's renewable energy portfolio, for example, includes highly demanding Green building standards (LEED); conversion to biodiesel and the recycling of "fats, oils, and grease;" generous rebates for solar; and plans for collecting energy from tidal-flow turbines below the Golden Gate and wave generators off of Ocean Beach. He wants San Francisco to be the world leader in electric vehicles, starting with plug-in hybrids and moving to fully electric. They have half the moving parts of gas vehicles and much higher efficiency. The batteries can charge in off-peak hours, and gas stations can convert to "switch stations," where you simply swap in charged batteries in less time than it takes to fill up with gas. The way cellphone time is sold in minutes, vehicle charging can be sold in miles. He would like to see parking meters used for charging, and San Francisco is developing congestion-price parking meters that cost more during peak congestion hours, and that sense and can broadcast when they're empty. To encourage urban density, which is inherently Green, the city is building more highrises, and California's coming high-speed rail system will leave from the heart of downtown. Newsom noted with glee that there is now intense competition between cities to out-Green each other. Portland, San Francisco, Manhattan, Amsterdam, Vancouver, Singapore and countless others vie in the quest for Green bragging rights. They borrow ideas and deploy comparative shame: "How can sunless Berlin have more solar power than any American city?"

Daniel Everett: Endangered languages, lost knowledge and the future Mar 20, 2009

Show notes

### Language Revolution The Piraha tribe in the heart of the Amazon numbers only 360, spread in small groups over 300 miles. An exceptionally cheerful people, they live with a focus on immediacy, empiricism, and physical rigor that has shaped their unique language, claims linguist Daniel Everett. The Piraha language has no numbers or concept of counting (only terms for "relatively small" and "relatively large"); no kinship terms beyond immediate children and parents; no "left" and "right" (only "upriver" and "downriver"); no named distinction of past and future (only near time and far time); no creation stories or myths; and---most important for linguists---no recursion. A recursive sentence like "The boy who was fishing owned the dog" does not occur in the Piraha language. They would say, "The boy was fishing" and "The boy owned the dog." The eminent linguist Noam Chomsky has declared that recursion is an essential part of human language and is innate. Chomsky's former student Everett says that the Piraha language proves otherwise. The resultant controversy is profound. The Piraha language is the simplest in the world. Speaking it and singing it are the same, and it can be hummed or even whistled, yet it can convey enormous richness. Among other things, the wide variety of verb forms are used to account for the directness of evidence for a statement. Everett originally went to the Piraha in 1977 as a Christian missionary. They challenged him to provide evidence for the existence of Jesus, and lost interest when he couldn't. Eventually so did he. The Piraha made him an atheist. And the through him the Piraha revolutionized how we think about language. Some 40 percent of the world's 6,912 known languages are endangered, says Everett, and that endangers science. When we lose a language, we lose a whole way of life, a whole set of solutions to problems, a whole classification system and body of knowledge about the natural world, a whole calendar system, a whole complex of myths, folktales, and songs. Everett spelled out what it takes to preserve a living language that is endangered. The land where the speakers live must be preserved, and their health should be protected. The language needs to be documented in detail. And you could do worse than make a donation to the [Foundation for Endangered Languages](http://www.ogmios.org/home.htm).

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