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Stewart Brand

The Clock Of The Long Now: Time And Responsibility Hardcover – May 6, 1999

by Stewart Brand (Author)

24 customer reviews

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Using the designing and building of the Clock of the Long Now as a framework, this is a book about the practical use of long time perspective: how to get it, how to use it, how to keep it in and out of sight. Here are the central questions it inspires: How do we make long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare? Discipline in thought allows freedom. One needs the space and reliability to predict continuity to have the confidence not to be afraid of revolutions Taking the time to think of the future is more essential now than ever, as culture accelerates beyond its ability to be measured Probable things are vastly outnumbered by countless near-impossible eventualities. Reality is statistically forced to be extraordinary; fiction is not allowed this freedom This is a potent book that combines the chronicling of fantastic technology with equally visionary philosophical inquiry.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The image of our planet on the cover of Brand's Whole Earth Catalog communicated a powerful symbol of the big picture. Brand's new, mind-stretching book challenges readers to get outside themselves and combat the short-term irresponsible thinking that has led to environmental destruction and social chaos. Brand also eloquently urges us to distill and preserve knowledge. Though we seem to live in an age of information overload (each new U.S. president leaves behind more papers than all the previous ones combined), Brand contends that we actually inhabit an age of rapid information loss. Because of changing storage media, as one researcher has quipped, "digital information lasts foreverAor five years, whichever comes first." Time capsules don't solve the problem, for 70% of them are lost almost immediately after being sealed. Brand envisages two monuments that will incorporate the long view into our common consciousness. The first is a giant, exquisitely slow clock. It would be big enough to walk around in, and it would display the year, positions of the sun and moon, generations and millennia. The second is the "Ten-Thousand Year Library," a vast underground labyrinth of books. Here we'd preserve enormous amounts of knowledge from history and other long-perspective disciplines. These ideas deserve more than 15 minutes of fame. Quotable quotes, plentiful paradoxes and humane values make this a book to be savored and discussedAslowly. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Touted as "the least recognized most influential thinker in America," Brand, creater of The Whole Earth Catalog, wears that mantle with aplomb in his latest offering. He takes on civilization's "pathologically short attention span" with a proposal to encourage us all to assume long-term responsibility for the continuation of the human species. How to do this? By creating both a myth and a mechanism with which to counter our short focus these days, which Brand names as the core of the problem. He spends the remainder of this rumination clarifying that thought and outlining the details of the myth and mechanism that he suggests as a catalyst: a clock that ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and cuckoos but once a millennium. The Clock of the Long Now is both fascinating and, yes, maybe just a bit revolutionary and is most likely to find a suitable home in academic and larger public libraries with readers who are fervent in the desire to see us go on. [See also Brand's "Escaping the Digital Age," LJ 2/1/99, p. 46-48.AEd.]AGeoff Rotunno, "Valley Voice" Newspaper, Goleta, C.
-AGeoff Rotunno, "Valley Voice" Newspaper, Goleta, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product details

Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: Basic Books; 1st edition (May 6, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 046504512X
ISBN-13: 978-0465045129
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 10 inches
Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 24 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,179,562 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2179 in Philosophy Metaphysics
- #4287 in Divination
- #1280 in Social Aspects of Technology

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Chinarut

straight forward history lesson 10,000 years back and in front of us

December 22, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I got this book back in October at the Evernote Conference in 2014. Phil Libin raved about the book and now that I've read it - I can see why. As a futurist and a strategist, the book did a fascinating job widening my perspective not only 10,000 years into the future, but also made me very conscious about what got us here. What is it going to take to preserve aspects of our civilizations for thousands of centuries to come? Many great inquiries are posed to make you realize it takes a completely different mindset to think about the consequences of our actions 10,000 years into the future.

The book reads really easy - I don't recommend blowing through the book. The chapters are extremely short, its core point well made and provides the reader for thought. Let each chapter simmer and read no more than 1 chapter a day. You'll find this book a bit of a "tour of the ages" and if you're like me, you'll want to dive into references in the book's bibliography. This is probably one of the first books I thoroughly enjoyed *all* the end notes!

For anyone who strives to leave a legacy and perhaps more importantly, realizes their life's work will not be completed in this lifetime and its fruits will be reaped by later generations - this book is for you!

5 people found this helpful

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Buckeye

A unique view of our responsiblity for the future

September 3, 2000

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This book examines the topic of thinking and planning for the long term - and the author definitely means the LONG term. The book focuses on two nascent projects headed up by the author and the "Long Now Foundation" - the effort to build a 10,000 year clock and a 10,000 year library. This projects are intended to help shift humanity's concept of "now" to a much longer time frame. And with this shift in the concept of now, it is hoped that a new concept of responsibility for our individual and group behavior will emerge.
This book and the thinking behind it represent an excellent counterpoint to the prevalent and destructive view of "now" as beeing some extremely short term time frame - today, this week, or (for many corporations) this quarter. One can only hope that it is widely read. If the ideas behind this book and its associated project change only a small segment of our population's view about stewardship and care for the long-term health and longevity of our planet and our race it will be well worth the effort.
While I thought the book was generally very well-written, and presented many, many thought-provoking points, some of the ideas seem to have been rather poorly thought out and gave the impression of having been simply tossed in to the mix. At one point a potential role of the 10,000 year library as a repository of both sides of important debates is described - an excellent idea, but the objective is described as allowing future generations to know who to "blame" if things go wrong. Going to all this trouble just so our descendants can engage in blaming someone for something seems rather silly. Fortunately, there are loftier goals for this project, and many are very well described throughout the book.
This book has strongly impacted the way I think about the future. I highly recommend it.

23 people found this helpful

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N. H. Hubbard

challenging and inspiring

May 9, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This book was suggested by a university lecturer who is teaching courses in strategic thinking and strategic analysis. While book doesn't answer any questions about strategic analysis, it contains many pointers about what is involved in thinking in longer time frames, including futures. Perhaps it's subtitle could be "Don't panic" (taken from Douglas Adams). The book does not itself say don't panic - but it does provide comfort that current and future issues need to be considered, rationally and optimistically, not with fear and dread - conditions which are likely to lead to misguided efforts to address the wrong problem...

2 people found this helpful

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Charles Rovira

Five Stars

December 27, 2017

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I like Stewart Brand's view of things. If you haven't read this book, you're missing out.

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C. S. Cooper

Five Stars

February 3, 2017

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Very intersting book really worth reading, very broad prospective and deep understanding.

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Sunny One

The Long Perspective

September 10, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

The long view isn't taken very often in today's world. This book makes a good case for long-range thinking and planning. It moves a bit slowly ... I do recognize the irony here.

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Fortunat Mueller-maerki

THOUGHT PROVOKING ... and very necessary

January 29, 2000

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

The LONG NOW is an philosophy, a way to look at the world and at history that is finding its symbolic expression in a extraordinary, creative and novel clock to be designed and built over the next few years.
The people involved in this project to me are some of the most thoughtfull and creative minds of our civilsation.

One person found this helpful

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Kevin

Don't know what's coming. Do know we're in it together.

April 6, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I loved the book. Caring about what's beyond one's life is precisely the point.

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The Clock Of The Long Now: Time And Responsibility Hardcover – May 6, 1999

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