Cosmic Life The pace of astronomic discovery, said the Astronomer Royal, keeps increasing with the constant improvement in our sensing technology. The recent discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe (dark energy) revolutionized cosmology, and with the launch of the Kepler Telescope in 2009, we are beginning to detect and study Earth-sized planets around [...]

Philip Zimbardo’s talk on the Secret Powers of Time wonderfully illustrated in pseudo-realtime by RSA animate. (found via caterina.net) , Original article Go to the feed source of this article Go to LongNow.org This article appeared on TheLongNow.org and the author and/or the publisher are to be credited explicitly for the content. Alphaverse.com is not [...]

During his Seminar, Jesse Schell recommended a number of books and other resources that have informed his conception of the Gamepocalypse.  Here’s a list of the books for the curious: Authenticity, by James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II Finite and Infinite Games, by James P. Carse The Singularity is Near, by Ray Kurzweil [...]

Gaming the World In a glee-filled evening, Schell declared that games and real life are reaching out to each other with such force that we might come to a condition of “gamepocalypse—where every second of your life you’re playing a game in some way. He expects smart toothbrushes and buses that give us good-behavior points, [...]

Jeff Rothenberg once said “Digital information lasts forever – or five years, whichever comes first.”  This is basis of an interesting debate between New York Times writer Jeffrey Rosen who recently published “The End of Forgetting,” and Scott Rosenberg’s rebuttal on his blog. (Excerpt from Rosenberg below) But Rosen is too busy hatching plans for [...]

The Long News: stories that might still matter fifty, or a hundred, or ten thousand years from now. At a recent Long Now seminar, Ed Moses mentioned in passing that we now produce enough bullets each year to kill every person on the planet — twice. We are a violent species; we hunt, we organize [...]

Radoslav Zilinsky’s 2007 artwork “The World” A stunning painting of a possible future (or present depending on how you look at it)… walled cities of techno-utopia surrounded by the rest of the world living in the middle ages.  Here is a link to the large version on Zilinzky’s site.  (Found via Coolvibe.) , Original article [...]