Ahmed Best

Ahmed Best’s Long Now Talk was the first in the more-than-twenty-year history of Long Now Talks to be held on Valentine’s Day. It was also the first to feature a sing-a-long performance of Al Green’s 01970s soul music classic “Let’s Stay Together,” with the speaker accompanying the audience at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre on a 7-piece drum kit. Finally, it was the first to feature a live theater performance from audience volunteers, depicting the past, present, and future through glances, gestures, and play.

Yet beyond these firsts, Ahmed Best’s Long Now Talk felt deeply rooted in the spirit of Long Now Talks. Over the course of Feel the Future, Ahmed’s Valentine’s Evening Long Now Talk, he leads the audience on a journey through creativity and imagination, drawing on his experiences as a cast member on the award-winning percussion performance Stomp, as Jar-Jar Binks, the ground-breaking first major CGI character actor in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, and as a lecturer at the Stanford d.school and one of the leaders of the AfroRithms Futures Group

When we spoke to Ahmed Best in the lead up to his Long Now Talk, he asked us a question: “When you feel the future, how do you share that feeling in order to build community?”

Over the past quarter-century, Best — first as an actor, musician, and performer, and later as an Afrofuturist scholar and lecturer — has worked to answer that question. By bringing people together through electrifying performance and thought-provoking conversation, Best’s work has been able to make the future not just an abstract, intellectual consideration but something that can be felt in collective experience.

The core of Ahmed’s argument? Feeling is a form of communication in itself, beyond words — and only by taking action and sharing our feelings of the future with each other in our communities can we create the futures we want for ourselves. Using a diverse range of creative and imaginative tactics, Best incorporates play and motion in order to help audiences Feel The Future.

Why This Talk Matters Now

Our work as long-term thinkers cannot succeed without considering the kaleidoscopic diversity of potential futures that Afrofuturism showcases. Best’s work exemplifies that potential, rousing us out of our routines and finding new creative pathways to understand and imagine the future. In his own thinking, Best draws on a diverse range of authors, citing the work of James Baldwin alongside that of legal scholar Andrea Freeman and historical novelist Amitav Ghosh to sketch out the connections between our past, our planet, and our futures. 

The Long View

Best hosts the Afrofuturist Podcast alongside Long Now Research Fellow Lonny J Avi Brooks. Brooks’ 02021 Long Now Talk When is Wakanda: Imagining Afrofutures explored the history of Afrofuturism, following its roots and different cultural manifestations and challenging dominant the narratives of futures and forecasting that have often excluded Black futurists and their insights. Best joined Brooks for the Q&A portion of his talk, contextualizing his role as Jar Jar Binks in the lineage of Afrofuturism and speaking on the need to change the “operating system” of society.  

For his own Long Now Talk, Best is joined on stage in conversation with Long Now Board Member Lisa Kay Solomon. As a Futurist in Residence at the Stanford d.school, Solomon teaches classes like “Inventing the future” and “View from the future,” to help leaders and learners learn skills to anticipate and adapt to increasingly complex futures. Lisa recently joined the board of the Long Now Foundation, and is passionate about helping infusing futures thinking and practices into both classrooms and board rooms.

Where to Go Next

• Ahmed Best recently sat down with Long Now to discuss interstellar travel, creativity, and the connection between sand divination and smartphones.
• In 02024, Ahmed Best was profiled in the New York Times about his legacy as the first major CGI character actor and the impact Star Wars has had on his life. 
• Watch Lonny J Avi Brooks’ Long Now Talk on imagining Afrofutures, featuring Ahmed Best in the Q&A.