Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
4:15PM, Wednesday, April 21, 1999
NEC Auditorium, Gates Computer Science Building B03
Non-ephemeral Digital Design
10,000-year computation
Stewart Brand
The Long Now Foundation
About the talk:
Current civilization and current information technology are severely short-sighted and timebound. Danny Hillis and The Long Now Foundation are building a 10,000-year Clock. It is a mechanical binary computer, the world's slowest computer. Among other things it solves the Y10K problem. Long Now is also exploring solution paths for the almost intractable problem of ensuring digital continuity. Civilization's information record now is being almost totally lost every 10-20 years due to technology obsolescence and fragile media.
About the speaker:
Stewart Brand founds and co-founds things: the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG in 1968, the New Games Tournament in 1974, The Hackers Conference in 1984, The WELL in 1985, Global Business Network in 1987, The Long Now Foundation in 1996. His books include: TWO CYBERNETIC FRONTIERS (1974), THE MEDIA LAB (1987), HOW BUILDINGS LEARN (1994), THE CLOCK OF THE LONG NOW (1999).
Contact information:
Stewart Brand
sb@gbn.org