Clock Of The Long Now

Time And Responsibility: The Ideas Behind The World's Slowest Computer
by Stewart Brand

Apr 5, 2000
Paperback
US $14.00
CAN $17.00
ISBN: 9780465007806
ISBN-10: 0465007805
Published by Basic Books

 

Description

Using the designing and building of the Clock of the Long Now as a framework, this is a book about the practical use of long time perspective: how to get it, how to use it, how to keep it in and out of sight. Here are the central questions it inspires:

  • How do we make long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare?
  • Discipline in thought allows freedom. One needs the space and reliability to predict continuity to have the confidence not to be afraid of revolutions
  • Taking the time to think of the future is more essential now than ever, as culture accelerates beyond its ability to be measured
  • Probable things are vastly outnumbered by countless near-impossible eventualities. Reality is statistically forced to be extraordinary; fiction is not allowed this freedom
    • This is a potent book that combines the chronicling of fantastic technology with equally visionary philosophical inquiry.

    Reviews


    "For minds trapped in the ever-tightening time spiral of techno-capitalist progress, where fame is fifteen minutes and the future is this quarter's profits, [Stewart Brand] has provided a wonderful escape route—an exhilarating, liberating, total change of scale and pace."
    — Ursula K. Le Guin

    "Inspired boffinry: the building of a very slow time-machine. A fine and thoughtful read on the eve of the new century."
    — William Gibson, author of Neuromancer

    Selling Territory


    World Excluding UK & Commonwealth