Talks

Alexander Rose, Kevin Kelly, & Stewart Brand

Siberia: A Journey to the Mammoth Steppe

Recorded live on Jan 22, 02019

at The Interval at Long Now

In August of 02018, Long Now founder Stewart Brand, renowned geneticist George Church, and a delegation of observers and scientists traveled to one of Earth's most remote places to witness the ongoing restoration of a part of Siberia back to its Pleistocene-era ecosystem. The team brought back DNA samples to evaluate for mammoth de-extinction, and lots of photos, video, and stories of a place where climate change and arctic deep time can be witnessed at once. At this event Long Now's Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, and Alexander Rose were joined by filmmakers David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg to discuss the trip and the things they learned along the way.

bio

Following a quarter century of leadership of The Long Now Foundation, Alexander Rose continues his work on 10,000-year clock and his research to discover the stories and lessons behind the world’s longest-lived organizations.

Alexander is an industrial designer and has been working with The Long Now Foundation and computer scientist Danny Hillis since 01997 to build a monument scale, all mechanical 10,000-year clock. Alexander speaks about the work of The Long Now Foundation all over the world at venues ranging from TEDå to corporations and government agencies.

As the director of Long Now, Alexander founded The Interval, The Organizational Continuity Project, and has facilitated a range of projects including The Rosetta Project, Long Bets, Seminars About Long Term Thinking, Long Server and others. Alexander shares several design patents on the 10,000 Year Clock with Danny Hillis, the first prototype of which is in the Science Museum of London, and the monument scale version is now under construction in West Texas. Alexander is also an advisor to the METI project.

Alexander graduated with a bachelor of arts honors degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Industrial Design in 01995, as well as attended the Art Center College of Design. He was an artist in residence at Silicon Graphics Inc., and a founding partner of the robotics company Inertia Labs.

Alexander's combat robots have won over six world championship titles appearing in the hit TV show BattleBots. He has built large pyrotechnic displays for the Burning Man festival, robotic bartenders and other dangerous machines. Alexander was a world champion paintball player holding multiple world titles with his team the Ironmen from 1990 through 1995. At Carnegie Mellon University Alexander was the lead designer for a record setting human powered vehicle team.

Alexander lives in California in Marin County and enjoys mountain biking, mountaineering and other back country activities whenever he can get out.

Speaking engagements

Writing and media appearances

Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired, a magazine he helped launch in 01993. He served as its Executive Editor from its inception until 01999. From 01984 - 01990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 01985. Kelly edited, published, and wrote much of Signal, a pre-Wired compendium of digital tools. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy, a blueprint for the emerging digital economy, and wrote the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control. His newest book is called What Technology Wants, due out in the Fall 02010. He is also editor and publisher of several very popular websites including Cool Tools, True Films, and the Quantified Self.

Kevin Kelly's writing has appeared in many national and international publications such as the New York Times, The Economist, Time, The Smithsonian, Harpers, Science, GQ, Wall Street Journal and Esquire. Before taking up the consequences of technology, Kelly was a nomadic photojournalist. One summer he rode a bicycle 5,000 miles across America. For most of the 01970's he was a photographer in remote parts of Asia, publishing his photographs in national magazines. His photographs have appeared in LIFE and other national magazines. In 02001 he co-founded a scientific initiative called the All Species Inventory to discover and describe all the living species on Earth. That project eventually became the Encyclopedia of Life.

Stewart Brand is cofounder of The Long Now Foundation and cofounder of Global Business Network. He created and edited the Whole Earth Catalog (National Book Award), and co-founded the Hackers Conference and The WELL. His books include The Clock of the Long Now; How Buildings Learn; and The Media Lab. His most recent book, titled Whole Earth Discipline, is published by Viking in the US and Atlantic in the UK. He graduated in Biology from Stanford and served as an Infantry officer.

His homepage is here.

Join our newsletter for the latest in long-term thinking

Subscribe
-
The Long Now Foundation