The Clock of the Long Now

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Using the Millennial Clock-a supremely slow computer that will keep perfect time for the next 10,000 years-as a paradigm for the Long Now, Stewart Brand, called "the least recognized, most influential thinker in America," offers a practical manual that introduces us to the concept of long-term responsibility

For many, the turn of the millennium represents a point beyond which nothing can be imagined. Stewart Brand, an important figure in the United States counterculture, sees this inability to imagine the future as an unwillingness to accept responsibility for it.

Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The acceleration of technology, the short horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the distractions of personal multitasking: All are on the increase. All discourage taking a long view.

Clock of the Long Now will ask these necessary and "timely" questions: How do we make long-term thinking automatic and common instead of counterintuitive and rare? How can we make the acceptance of long-term responsibility inevitable? As culture accelerates beyond our ability to measure it reliably, how do we find the time to think about the future?

Combining a story of fantastic technology with visionary philosophical discourse, Clock of the Long Now is an elegant and potent performance of radical intellectualism and alternative thinking.