Friday, February 8, 2008
The Long Now
Brian Eno coined the term "The Long Now" and is one of the founding members of this group who promotes long-term thinking. Their main project is the creation of a clock (designed by Daniel Hillis) which should run for 10,000 years. I remembered this project while we discussed "One, Two, Three, Faux" and believe it's a good counter-point to the idea of acclerated time and should also have relevance for many of your degree projects. Read the article (in the reading list on the sidebar) and interview from Dot Dot Dot 7 , comment here, and be ready to discuss in class on Monday, Feb 11.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
The reading seemed to tie in more to Matt Judge's project, especially toward the end. The Long Now Foundation choosing to plan for the much farther away future is very interesting. Most of us can't fathom what the world will be like in a thousand years....but our offspring will have to live in a world where some animals that we know now won't even exist, or will know completely new languages, all the old will have passed away and a new culture will begin. Their idea of the Rosetta Project is so facsinating to me. Imagine a hybrid language that could learn about what has come before from the 6,000 languages today. The All Species Foundation will be a lexicon for extinct animals and a reference back to see what their animals has evolved from.
I thought it was fantasic, the idea of science relating to music (the bells) as well. It was a lot of forward thinking that I might not really be able to grasp all of, but it should give us all inspiration to be much more forward thinking in our own projects
♥
teenuh
i know it is good practice to slow down, to design for a lasting time period but my project in these terms is not responsible design. it's another thing for the short now, and has to do with being new and exciting. i hope the idea will develop to something that can keep on existing and keep being new, but it's not in the master plan yet. i've been focusing on bringing people together to get new ideas flowing, to communicate in a busy fast paced urban environment. i found it crazy that there's 6,000 living languages! now i really feel bad for forgetting the spanish and german i used to know, and somehow feel really small.
i still can't even begin to think about 10,000 years from now, let alone science fiction like bell projects. it is impressive, that's for sure. part of me at the thought of the "the long now" makes me want to slow down and think about the more distant future, and part of me wants to keep in the present and fill it with 10,000 years worth of activity since i won't be around then.
Of course I'm fascinated by all of this. It reminds me of a statement which provides a great hypothesis as to why each year in our life seems to be faster than the one before. It's a pretty obvious answer: time is relative. We're constantly comparing the time we've spent to the time we've already experienced. If you've spent less time on earth, your 365 days is compared to a small accumulation of days. But, the more days you've been hanging around, the more "365" becomes a smaller number in comparison.
I think it's great to have something as stable as a clock be the forefront of something conceptual as "time." But, we have to ask: are we just building something to remind the future that man/woman existed? Let's just hope it doesn't miss a tick.
i really appreciate this reading for the fact that The Long Now Foundation is, in my opinion, challenging time. I don't understand how they can actually know that this clock will sustain everything that will happen in the next 10,00 years, it's amazing to me. This article also reminds me of something random... some of my favorite places on to go are places in which slow down time. I would compare it to 'small town life' there is such a different energy that runs through time in general. its refreshing to me.
but thinking about design, and comparing to thinking ahead to the future of design is extremely important. Because if design is headed into the future at a quicker speed then it possibly could push communities to follow, i guess then speeding them up too. Who knows if that is the best thing though....
Post a Comment