Long Now Talks

Rick Prelinger

Lost Landscapes 02022 Bay and Gateway: Past Glimpses and Possible Futures

This year's LOST LANDSCAPES pictures the infrastructures, peoples and landscapes of California, centering on San Francisco’s everyday past and the futures we have tried to build. Casting an archival gaze on San Francisco and cities, towns and places throughout California where nature and culture meet, the film recalls moments in the history of our state's resources, the scars of settlement and its backbones: transportation, extraction, communication, travel and labor — all intersecting in a panoramic city/state symphony documenting the past and suggesting possible futures in an age of systemic uncertainty.

As always, this year's film (the 17th!) combines home movies, government-produced and industrial films, feature-film outtakes and many other surprises from the Prelinger Library collection (including many newly discovered San Francisco historical images).

Each year the Lost Landscapes donations bring in about 25% of the Prelinger Library's annual budget. Please consider supporting this famed experimental research library that gives access to artists, historians, community members, and researchers of all kinds!

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Long Now Talks are made possible by David and Abby Rumsey, Kim Polese, The Kaphan Foundation, Garrett Gruener, Scorpio Rising Fund, Peter Baumann, Brian Eno, Greg Stikeleather, Cameo Wood, Ping Fu, Peter Schwartz, Lawrence Wilkinson, Ken and Maddy Dychtwald, Future Ventures, Ken and Jackie Broad, AtoB, WHH Foundation, Stewart Brand and Ryan Phelan, Jackson Square Partners Foundation, and The Long Now Members. We would also like to recognize George Cowan (01920 - 02012) for being the first to sponsor this series.

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Long Now Talks are made possible through the generous support of The Long Now Membership and our Seminar Sponsors. We offer $5,000 and $15,000 annual Sponsorships, both of which entitle the sponsor and a guest to reserved seating at all Long Now seminars and special events. In addition, we invite $15,000 Sponsors to attend dinner with the speaker after each Seminar, and $5,000 Sponsors may choose to attend any four dinners during the sponsored year. For more information about donations and Seminar Sponsorship, please contact donate@longnow.org. We are a public 501(c)(3) non-profit, and donations to us are always tax deductible.

What is the long now?

The Long Now Foundation is a nonprofit established in 01996 to foster long-term thinking. Our work encourages imagination at the timescale of civilization — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan we call the long now.

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