The passage of time is flicking dimly up on the screen

June 20, 2004 3:35 PM

An entertaining talk on long term thinking, by Brian Eno.
posted by Blue Stone (9 comments total)

The Long Now Foundation, and its work, has been mentioned previously on Metafilter.
posted by Blue Stone at 3:35 PM on June 20, 2004

I like the pictures!
posted by mcsweetie at 5:16 PM on June 20, 2004

It would take a long time to read about all that long term thinking. I think I'll take a cat nap instead
posted by Outlawyr at 5:32 PM on June 20, 2004

The Long Now Foundation is hosting talks like this every other Friday in San Francisco. They're great! Saw Bruce Sterling troll a room full of cyberpunk fans last week on the concept of the Singularity, or techo-rapture as he put it.
posted by Voivod at 6:15 PM on June 20, 2004

Thanks for this!
posted by Dean King at 6:37 PM on June 20, 2004

Actually in the 1950s I heard there used to be jukeboxes in America that had one silent disc, so if you wanted a bit of peace, then you put your dime in and you dialed that number and you got three minutes of silence.

Any truth to that? Sounds pretty apocryphal to me, but if true it would be bad news for John Cage.

For an alternate take on the Long Now folks check out Michael Lewis' book, Next: The Future Just Happened, which has an accompanying BBC series. Episode the Fourth (Realmedia) has an interview with some of the Long Now people around 30 min in although he isn't as harsh on them as he was in the book.
posted by euphorb at 8:37 PM on June 20, 2004

awesome post, missed it the first times
posted by Satapher at 9:18 PM on June 20, 2004

Actually in the 1950s I heard there used to be jukeboxes in America that had one silent disc, so if you wanted a bit of peace, then you put your dime in and you dialled that number and you got three minutes of silence. I’d love to get a collection of those records wouldn’t that be fantastic! A jukebox where that’s all you had on, different varieties of silence.

This is my kind of weirdo.
posted by BigCalm at 2:23 AM on June 21, 2004

Great post! I've only gotten through about a third of the prose, but those pictures! One of the things I love about Eno is that he can be both perfectly serious and perfectly silly at the same time. These are good examples of that.
posted by soyjoy at 6:45 AM on June 21, 2004