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Future Speak

The Long Now Foundation wants to assemble every human language on one nearly indestructible disk -- and, maybe, to last forever

A A A Comments By Michael Scott Moore Wednesday, Oct 9 2002

Yeah, who knows? Kelly has a way of fantasizing about the future of his organization that sounds simultaneously crazy and modest. He's a gentle, quiet man -- not an egotist -- and he understands that Long Now may not survive the life span of its founders. It is, after all, not a religion. Still, it's worth mentioning that Kelly thinks of Burning Man as a sort of proto-religion -- "ritual without theology." He says, "The Man is exactly the same every year, and they've got this very elaborate and completely meaningless ritual, and they maintain continuity. It's transparent right now, but who knows what would happen over millennia?" It may be no coincidence that most of the Long Now office clears out every year for Burning Man, or that the foundation owns a mountain in Nevada.

One idea behind Charlie Butcher's funding outfit -- Lazy Eight -- is that lazy, idle thinking can produce interesting practical results. The Rosetta Project, if it finishes its All-Language Archive, might become Exhibit A for this notion. Of course, Kelly and the others at Long Now realize that civilization may collapse in a hundred years, that the Rosetta Disk might be vaporized in a nuclear attack, or the Millennium Clock might get sand in its gears and conk out before the year 3000. Long Now is certainly not a front-runner in the race to become an enduring religion, but, says Kelly, "we can certainly make that attempt." He shrugs, with the romantic's stubborn insistence that the attempt in itself is worthwhile.

Paolo Vescia

The Long Now Team: Catherine Bacon, Alexander Rose, Kurt Bollacker, and Jim Mason, with an early prototype of the Rosetta Disk.

Paolo Vescia

Alexander Rose.

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"We're future junkies," he says. "That's Whole Earth, and it's Wired -- that's just our diction." He shrugs again. "We're trying to think ahead."