Richard Rhodes: Twilight of the Bombs
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - September 21, 2010
The Pulitzer-winning author examines how a single nuclear weapon profoundly shaped world history for most of a century. Its disappearance can have equally profound effects.
Paul Romer: A Theory of History, with an Application
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - May 18, 2009
Romer shows that 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.
Pamela Ronald & Raoul Adamchak: Organically Grown and Genetically Engineered: The Food of the Future
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - July 28, 2009
The UC Davis staffers present a visionary new approach to producing food: combining genetic engineering and organic farming.
Philip Rosedale: Second Life: What Do We Learn If We Digitize Everything?
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - November 30, 2006
What is real life coming to owe digital life? After a couple years in the flat part of exponential growth, the steep part is now arriving for the massive multi-player online world construction kit called "Second Life."
Paul Saffo: China Thinks Long-term, But Can It Relearn to Act Long-term?
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - January 11, 2008
The most quoted futurist alive, Paul Saffo specializes in the history and future of technology. In this talk, he spells out the secrets of his trade.
Jesse Schell: Visions of the Gamepocalypse
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - July 27, 2010
In this talk, Schell explores the social, cognitive, and technological trends in computer game design and use.
Orville Schell: China Thinks Long-term, But Can It Relearn to Act Long-term?
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - September 22, 2006
"China is the most unresolved nation of consequence in the world," Orville Schell began. It is defined by its massive contradictions.
Peter Schwartz and Ralph Cavanaugh: Nuclear Power, Climate Change and the Next 10,000 Years
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - January 13, 2006
Peter Schwartz of the Global Business Network and Ralph Cavanagh of the Natural Resources Defense Counsel examine whether the "abrupt climate change" should lead to new emphasis on nuclear power.
Neal Stephenson: Anathem
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - September 9, 2008
What if we lived in a world where the long-term was taken seriously? At an event hosted by the Long Now Foundation, science fiction author Neal Stephenson reads from his latest novel
Anathem.
Daniel Suarez: Daemon: Bot-mediated Reality
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - August 8, 2008
The viral success story of the year is a techno-thriller called Daemon. Suarez tells how he self-printed the book after being turned down by mainstream publishers.
Television: The Enchanted Mirror
DVD : Zala Films : Release Date - October 1, 2008
An acclaimed 1981 documentary about the impact of television on people and social institutions, which was produced before the dawn of the computer age, has been remastered and released by Whole Earth Films.
Philip Tetlock: Why Foxes Are Better Forecasters Than Hedgehogs
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - January 26, 2007
From his perspective as a psychology researcher, Philip Tetlock watched political advisors on the left and the right make bizarre rationalizations about their wrong predictions at the time of the rise of Gorbachev in the 1980s and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.
Sander van der Leeuw: The Archaeology of Innovation
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - November 18, 2009
Are we the first civilization to try and innovate our way out of climate change? How have past societies engineered sustainable solutions to a shifting world?
Craig Venter: Vision: Joining 3.5 Billion Years of Microbial Invention
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - February 25, 2008
With his current series of breakthroughs in synthetic biology Craig Venter and his team are not so much creating life as joining life. Reverse-engineering evolution's long-refined tricks and subtleties at the molecular level is building humanity's most powerful toolkit yet.
Vernor Vinge: What If the Singularity Does Not Happen?
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - February 15, 2007
Vernor Vinge began by declaring that he still believes that a Singularity event in the next few decades is the most likely outcome — meaning that self-accelerating technologies will speed up to the point of so profound a transformation that the other side of it is unknowable.
Jimmy Wales: Vision: Wikipedia and the Future of Free Culture
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - April 14, 2006
Jimmy Wales, founder and president of the all-embracing online encyclopedia Wikipedia, examines how vision drives and defines that project and its strategy — and how it fits into the even larger world and prospects of "free culture."
Alex Wright: Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - August 17, 2007
Alex Wright is a writer and information architect who currently works for
The New York Times. His first book,
Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages is an impressive survey on how societies have dealt with information overload through time.
Will Wright and Brian Eno: Playing with Time
DVD : Long Now Foundation : Release Date - June 26, 2006
In a dazzling duet Will Wright and Brian Eno gave an intense clinic on the joys and techniques of "generative" creation.