Long Now: Seminars About Long-term Thinking

John Rendon, head of The Rendon Group, is a senior communications consultant to the White House and Department of Defense. His subject in this talk is how to replace tactical, reactive response to terror with long-term strategic initiative.

Will Wright, creator of the video games "Sim City," "The Sims," and the forthcoming "Spore," will speak on playing with time.

A new economic principle is the "the long tail," discovered and named by the editor of Wired magazine, Chris Anderson. The former dominance of best-sellers has been augmented by the new dominance of innumerable tiny-sellers, thanks to the Internet. Investor and publisher Will Hearst notes that there is a time dimension as well to the long tail phenomenon, still being discovered.

Vision is one of the most powerful forms of long-term thinking. Jimmy Wales, founder and president of the all-embracing online encyclopedia Wikipedia, examines how vision drives and defines that project and its strategy--- and how it fits into the even larger world and prospects of "free culture."

Anthropologist/ecologist Stephen Lansing tells a gorgeous tale of how spiritual practices in Bali have finessed over 1,000 years the most nuanced and productive agricultural system in the world. Cutting edge complexity theory spells out how the highly complex, highly adaptive system emerged.

In a very pointed discussion, two energy experts bring opposite perspectives to the question of whether global climate change justifies reviving nuclear power. Ralph Cavanagh is co-director of the Energy Program at the National Resources Defense Council. Peter Schwartz is co-founder and chairman of Global Business Network.

In his new book The End of Faith philosopher Sam Harris examines religious faith in terms of its consequences and aggressive irrationality. For this talk he explores how "end time" beliefs play out in social behavior and public policy. A Buddhist meditator, he mixes wicked humor into his compassion.

Clay Shirky is the most riveting of speakers at tech conferences, with his deep insight into social software and the culture and economics of networks. His talk for the next Seminar About Long-term Thinking takes on one of the most intractable problems of the information age: how to preserve digital information and tools in usable condition beyond ten years. The continuity of civilization is at stake in this matter.

"The Difficulty of Looking Far Ahead" is Freeman Dyson's subject at the next Seminar About Long-term Thinking. He will be joined for the first time on a public stage by his daughter Esther Dyson and son George Dyson.