Here are a few selections from the Brand book:

The original preamble from 1998 states:

"Civilization is revving itself into a pathologicaly short attentiion span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economies, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed - some mechanism or myth that encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where "the long term" is measured in at least centuries. (p. 2)

Three quick reactions:

• I like the identification of a number of factors, rather than zeroing on on just one, such as technology.
• I agree with both the observation and the need for a corrective.
• While the statements appear to be generally true, they are most noticeable when one examines the United States. The Long Now Foundation is also heavily weighted by a US presence.

"Now that we have progress so rapid that it can be observed from year to year, no one calls it progress. People call it change, and rather than yearn for it, they brace themselves against its force." (p. 16)

"What people mean by the word technology is anything invented since they were born" [Alan Kay] (p. 16)

"What people mean by the word technology is the stuff that doesn't really work yet." [Danny Hillis] (p. 16)

"If you take time to perfect your product, you'll be too late to market." (p. 25)

"I find I want to be living in a Big Here and a Long Now" [Brian Eno] (p. 28)

• my time in the mountains seems to satisfy this requirement. So does time at the coast.

"In recent years a few scientists have been probing how ecological systems manage change, and how  they absorb and incorporate shocks. The answer appears to lie in the relationship between components in a system that have different change rates and different scales of size. ... Considered operationally, I propose six significant levels of pace and size in the working structure of a robust and adaptable civilization. From fast to slow the levels are:
- fashion/art
- commerce
- infrastructure
- governance
- culture
- nature. (p. 36)

• I like this taxonomy. It gives one a framework for interpreting the "big picture"
• I wonder if a similar idea could be applied to the stable educational system? Here are some preliminary thoughts for some categories:
• classroom practice
• school administration
• community involvement
• district administration
• professional organizations
• government.

It would appear that the primary responsibility for the "long now" lies with the professional organizations (including Faculties of Education).

The millenium clock is intended to be an object that "competes for iconic power with the mushroom cloud and the photos of Earth from space". (p. 48)

"Starting anew with a clean slate has been one of the most harmful ideas in history." (p. 74}

"digital information last forever - or five years, whichever comes first". ... "It turns out that what was so carefully stored was written with a now-obsolete application, in a now-obsolete operating system, on a long-vanished make of computer, using a now-obsolete storage medium." (p. 83)

"Never has there been a time of such drastic and irretreivable information loss" (p. 84)

"Here's the real fear. ... we are in the process of building one vast global computer. This world computer (the network) could easily become the Legacy System from Hell that holds civilization hostage: The system doesn't really work, it can't be fixed, no one understands it, no one is in charge of it, it can't be lived without, and it gets worse every year." (p. 85)

• we appear to be there already!

"Economic forecasting makes predictions by extrapolating curves of growth from the past into the future. Science fiction makes a wild guess and leaves the judgement of plausibility to the reader... For the future beyond ten years ahead, science fiction is a more useful guide than forecasting. [Freeman Dyson] A good science fiction story is a scenario in depth - a whole possible future. (p. 114)

"Economic forecasting misses the real future because it has too short a range; fiction misses the future because it has too little imagination. [Freeman Dyson] ... At any time the several "probable" things that might occur in the future are vastly outnumbered by the countless near-impossible eventualities., which are so many and individually so unlikely that it is not worth the effort of futurists or futurismists to examine and prepare for even a fraction of them. Yet one of these innumerable near-impossibilities is what is most likely to occur. Reality is thus statistically forced always to be extraordinary. Fiction is not allowed that freedom. Fiction has to be plausible; reality doesn't. (p. 115)

"While twenty-year forecasts are a complete waste of time, twenty-year scenarios are common and useful. ... Parties in dispute can utilize the scenario approach together. Using multiple scenarios allows parties to continue to disagree about the past and present and at the same time allow them to agree about possible futures they face together. Multiparty scenarios of this sort helped end aprtheid in South Africa. (p. 118)

This was a very thought-provoking book! I loved it.