Long Now

Long Now is the host context for Bayo Akomolafe: The Untimely, where Bayo Akomolafe presents The Untimely as a critique of modern time; for Indy Johar: Civilizational Optioneering, where Indy Johar presents a talk on civilizational optioneering; for Stefan Sagmeister: Finally, something good., where Stefan Sagmeister presents a talk on Informed Optimism and progress communication; for Melody Jue: Ocean Memory, where Melody Jue presents Ocean Memory as an ocean-humanities and multispecies memory question; for Eric Ries: Incorruptible by Design, where Eric Ries presents Incorruptible as a governance-design argument; and for Claire Isabel Webb & Nina Miolane: The Geometry of Consciousness, where Nina Miolane presents a geometric neuroscience route to a Mathematical Theory Of Intelligence. Together, the sources frame long-term thinking as a temporal-politics problem, a civilizational-coordination problem, an attention problem, a problem of sensing nonhuman futures, an institutional-design problem, and a scientific problem of how minds and machines can be understood.

The Akomolafe source adds the time-discipline and decolonial side of long-term thinking. Modern Time Discipline, Yoruba Twin Cosmology, Colonial Temporal Discipline, Fugitive Temporality, Autistic Time, Ancestrality, and Attention As Weather question whether countdowns, progress stories, and alternative temporalities still leave modernity’s logic of mastery intact.

The talk challenges a preservation-only version of long-termism. Instead, it asks what should be maintained so that a self-aware planet retains many possible futures. That makes Planetary Self-Awareness a bridge between the wiki’s space, AI, governance, and ecology themes rather than only a time-horizon institution.

The Sagmeister source adds the communication side of the same time-horizon problem. If Short-Term News Bias makes the world feel worse than long-run indicators support, then Progress Data Visualization, Beauty in Communication, and Participatory Exhibitions become tools for helping people perceive durable change without denying present risks.

The Jue source adds the oceanic and multispecies side of long-term thinking. Ocean Memory, Milieu-Specific Analysis, Chemosensation, Ecological Memory, Multispecies Archives, and Ocean Acidification ask how seawater, organisms, chemical gradients, sensory worlds, archives, and environmental damage carry past conditions into future life.

The Ries source adds the corporate-governance side of long-term thinking. Financial Gravity, Human Flourishing Profit, Steward Ownership, Trust As Business Asset, Private Regulatory Power, and AI Alignment Governance ask how companies can remain accountable when capital, markets, boards, customers, and AI power push them away from their founding mission.

The Miolane source adds the neuroscience and AI-interpretability side of long-term thinking. Neural Geometry, Population Coding, Spatial Navigation Torus, Fourier Spatial Encoding, and Consciousness Measurement ask whether intelligence can be explained through shared geometric principles across brains and machines without reducing consciousness to a simple threshold claim.

Connections

• Indy Johar and Dark Matter Labs — speaker and organizational context.
• Bayo Akomolafe, Orland Bishop, Eshu, and Great Dismal Swamp — speaker, named interlocutor, mythic figure, and fugitive place in the untimely source branch.
• Stefan Sagmeister, Lisa K. Solomon, and Finally Something Good — design-and-progress source branch.
• Melody Jue and Ocean Memory Project — ocean-humanities and art-science source branch.
• Eric Ries and Incorruptible — institutional-design and mission-governance source branch.
• Nina Miolane and Claire Isabel Webb — speaker and interviewer for the neural-geometry and consciousness source branch.
• Civilizational Optionality — source’s proposed object of preservation.
• The Untimely, Modern Time Discipline, Yoruba Twin Cosmology, Colonial Temporal Discipline, Fugitive Temporality, Autistic Time, Ancestrality, and Attention As Weather — temporal-politics implications of long-term thinking.
• Systemic Degenerative Volatility — condition that makes ordinary long-term planning harder.
• Foundational Economies, Existutions, and Outcome Accelerators — institutional implications of the talk.
• Informed Optimism, Optimism Gap, and Short-Term News Bias — attention and perception implications of long-term thinking.
• Ocean Memory, Milieu-Specific Analysis, Chemosensation, Ecological Memory, Multispecies Archives, and Ocean Acidification — oceanic memory and sensory implications of long-term thinking.
• Financial Gravity, Human Flourishing Profit, Steward Ownership, Trust As Business Asset, Private Regulatory Power, and AI Alignment Governance — company-governance implications of long-term thinking.
• Mathematical Theory Of Intelligence, Neural Geometry, Population Coding, Spatial Navigation Torus, Fourier Spatial Encoding, and Consciousness Measurement — neuroscience and AI-interpretability implications of long-term thinking.