The clock of the long now Book

The Clock of the Long Now is an attempt by a group of forward thinkers --engineers, futurists, visionaries--to create a device to stimulate people to take a longer view of time. An actual physical clock that will "time" the next 10,000 years. Why ten thousand? Because 10,000 years ago, mankind invented agriculture, and with it, civilization began. The enormous leap wherein human beings planted seed for the coming year, rather than eating it. A sense that the future will come and can be cultivated and cared for, with an improved result for the human in current time.

Though the book, a series of meditations with some lectures thrown in, was written by Stewart Brand (of the Whole Earth Catalogue), it was Brian Eno who invented the concept of the Long Now. "I want to live in the Big Here and the Long Now." Not this scrap of dirt and the next three weeks, but the big here, earth, and the long now. The understanding, to quote the book, "that we are not at the beginning or the end but in the middle of history." We are neither the culmination of creation, nor the end point before the apocalypse, nor some kind of reset revolutionaries. I loved this book. I actually took notes--so I could expand my head anew.

One of the most interesting concepts occurs early on--the tension between fast and slow thinking in human culture, an accelerating problem for us. (No one who has read Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman--the Nobel prizewinning economist, will find any of this surprising.) Fast thinking innovates, slow thinking consolidates. Fast thinking is clever, slow thinking is wise. Fast thinking breaks through like a flash of lightning, slow thinking creates deep-rooted civilizations.

I thought the book's presentation of a breakdown of human life/endeavor into six time-scales of civilization--extremely potent. Brand posits six 'speeds' of human endeavor, all of which operate simultaneously. The fastest stream or layer is Fashion/Art. Its 'period' is a season. The Now of this Now. It's all about innovation, novelty, and this particular moment. Beneath that is the layer of Commerce, or Business. This Now is a business cycle, it's the quarterly earnings statement.

Each layer performs a slowing function on the level above it, so the whole thing doesn't spin out into the clear blue sky'by slowing it down (changes, ideas) at least some of the changes can reach deeper and deeper levels, where greater longevity can be established.

The layer below Commerce is Infrastructure, where we're looking at decades to build systems of transportation, energy, water storage and delivery'to build all those roads and bridges and subways and bullet trains and so on. Commerce doesn't have the slow enough thinking to take care of human needs, social needs and so on, that need a longer term of attention. Commerce asks, "where's my return?" and doesn't want to hear, "fifty years." Science is also infrastructure, as is education, and the entire social sector.

Below Infrastructure is Governance, which support life, makes sure that the important infrastructure is in place, which can think of the good of nations, and what needs to be done to insure the well being of the nation for centuries to come. It provides (should provide), the stability upon which the faster layers above it can do their jobs. (This is where we need to think seriously about people who want to run Governance the way they've successfully run Commerce, two levels above it.)

Beneath Governance, and even slower, is Culture'marked at the pace of language and traditional religion. It marks the deep connection to the roots of civilizations. After reading this, I became more aware of the positive aspects of traditional religion and also of the cultures who are sticklers for the purity of language'the French Academy comes to mind. At what a deep level evolved language is our bedrock. The very old stories of a culture provide the stability , without which we careen dangerously like a planet knocked from its axis by a cataclysmic collision in space. Agriculture is culture. Not fashion, not commerce. And the life rituals of religion'birth, death, marriage, provide the stability Culture needs to support the levels above it. This is the LONG Now.

Then, under culture, under everything, are the vast cycles of Nature. Which supports the whole thing. It's measured in eons, it's the viability of Planet Earth. The slowest of all.

The book is thick with different lenses for taking the long view, and I found it profoundly optimistic'we are so apocalyptic these days, our attention fixated on the noisy, colorful top layer, we think of everything spinning out of control, faster and faster. "How can we ever keep up?"

I found it profoundly recalibrating to think in terms of the Long Now, to think about Culture as such a deep, slow layer, to muse about ten thousand years from now. Brand writes dates with an extra zero in the front, to remind himself of the ten thousand years from now. If this is only 02015, then 03500 is possible, and 07500. It encourages responsible thought about life on earth.

It's been a long time since I've read a book so full of ideas. I'm putting it on the shelf next to my favorite book about Time, Robert Grudin's Time and the Art of Living.