Long Now

Millennia before engineering or software, robots and artificial intelligence were brought to life in Greek myths. The author of [_Gods and Robots Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology_](https://press.princeton.edu/titles/14162.html) traces the link between technology and tyranny from modern day concerns over AI to back to antiquities fear of beings were "made, not born.” [Adrienne Mayor](https://web.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Mayor.html) is a folklorist and historian of ancient science who investigates natural knowledge contained in pre-scientific myths and oral traditions. She has been at Stanford University since 02006; [_Gods and Robots_](https://press.princeton.edu/titles/14162.html) (2018) is her most recent book. Her other books include _The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times_ (2000); _Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World_ (2003); _The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women_ (2014); and a biography of Mithradates, _The Poison King_ (2010), a National Book Award finalist. She is a 02018-19 Berggruen Fellow at the [Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences](http://casbs.stanford.edu/) (CASBS), co-sponsors of this talk. While at CASBS she is continuing her investigations about how imagination is a link between myths about technology and science. Other projects include researching interdisciplinary topics in geomythology, to discover natural knowledge and scientific realities embedded in mythological traditions about nature.

[_Annalee Newitz's_](https://www.techsploitation.com/) new novel, [_The Future of Another Timeline_](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765392121), is about time travelers in an edit war over history. But it's also about using stories to change the course of civilization. Annalee discusses the idea of time travel, as well as the extensive scientific and historical research they did for the novel. Annalee Newitz writes science fiction and nonfiction. They are the author of the recent novel _The Future of Another Timeline_. Their previous novel, _Autonomous_ , was nominated for the Nebula and Locus Awards, and winner of the Lambda Literary Award. As a science journalist, they are a contributing opinion writer for _The New York Times_ , and have a monthly column in _New Scientist_. They have published in _The Washington Post_ , _Slate_ , _Popular Science_ , _Ars Technica_ , _The New Yorker_ , and _The Atlantic_ , among others. They are also the co-host of the Hugo Award-winning podcast [_Our Opinions Are Correct._](https://www.ouropinionsarecorrect.com/) They were the founder of _io9_ and served as the editor-in-chief of _Gizmodo_.

If we use AI to write our favorite music for us, will we lose the ability to write music ourselves? If an AI coach keeps divorced parents from arguing by text, can they get along without it? If the only novels and screenplays that get a green light are the ones that AI believes match up with past hits, will we wind up reading and watching the same thing over and over? In this conversation, NBC’s [_Jacob Ward_](https://jacobward.com), described the loop: the endless feedback cycle of pattern-recognition that threatens to collapse the complexity of human behavior into a predictable set of patterns across politics, entertainment, relationships, and art itself. Why is the loop so powerful? Why do companies keep empowering it? And what can we, as private citizens, do to resist its pull? Jacob Ward is a Berggruen Fellow at [_Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences_](https://casbs.stanford.edu) (CASBS), co-sponsor of this talk. Jacob Ward is technology correspondent for NBC News, where he reports on-air for Nightly News with Lester Holt, MSNBC, and The TODAY Show. The former editor-in-chief of Popular Science magazine, Ward was Al Jazeera’s science and technology correspondent from 02013 to 02018, and has hosted investigative documentaries for Discovery, National Geographic, and PBS. As a writer, Ward has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, and many other publications. His ten-episode Audible podcast, Complicated, discusses humanity’s most difficult problems, and he’s the host of an upcoming four-hour public television series, “Hacking Your Mind,” about human decision making and irrationality. Ward is a 02018-19 Berggruen Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, where he’s writing The Loop: Decision Technology and How to Resist It, due for publication by Hachette Book Group in 02020. The book explores how artificial intelligence and other decision-shaping technologies will amplify good and bad human instincts.

Andrew McAfee draws on a wide range of evidence to show that the world is already on the right track toward long-term health when it combines 1) technological progress, 2) capitalism, 3) responsive government, and 4) public awareness. That blend demonstrably gets humanity “more from less.” It dematerializes the economy and decouples it from exploiting nature while increasing prosperity for ever more people. McAfee argues that dematerialization is occurring because of the combination of capitalism and tech progress (especially progress with digital technologies). Contested markets provide the motive, and tech progress the opportunity, to save money by swapping bits for atoms throughout the economy. But competition and computers don't automatically deal with pollution or protect threatened ecosystems. Two other forces are necessary--public awareness and responsive government. When all four are present, societies can tread more lightly on the Earth and grow in confidence that both humanity and nature can thrive together into the future. The reality of what works departs from every ideology out there. It also makes clear what needs to be further improved in the places where it’s working, such as the US, and what needs to be introduced in the places where it’s not working yet. Andrew McAfee is a research scientist at MIT‘s Sloan School of Management and cofounder of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. He is the author of _More From Less_ (2019) and co-author (with Erik Brynjolfsson) of _Machine, Platform, Crowd_(2017) and _The Second Machine Age_ (2014).

From the cultivation of the first crops to the founding of modern states, the human story is the story of environmental forces, from plate tectonics and climate change, to atmospheric circulation and ocean currents. Professor [_Lewis Dartnell_](http://lewisdartnell.com/en-gb) dove into the planet’s deep past, where history becomes science, to explore a web of connections that underwrites our modern world, and that can help us face the challenges of the future. Lewis Dartnell is a Professor of Science Communication at the University of Westminster. Before that, he completed his biology degree at the University of Oxford and his PhD at UCL, and then worked as the UK Space Agency research fellow at the University of Leicester, studying astrobiology and searching for signs of life on Mars. He has won several awards for his science writing and contributes to the Guardian, The Times, and New Scientist. He is also the author of three books. He lives in London, UK.

From kings and philosophers to craftsmen and inventors, horology has been prized as an extraordinary marriage between art and science. Antiquarian Horologist Brittany Nicole Cox shared her unique experience with objects born from this lineage. We traced their origins to discover how these objects serve as critical mirrors in a world of accelerated discovery. Her lifelong passion for horology has seen her through nine years in higher education where she earned her WOSTEP, CW21, and SAWTA watchmaking certifications, two clockmaking certifications, and a Masters in the Conservation of Clocks and Related Dynamic Objects from West Dean College, UK. In 2015 she opened [Memoria Technica](https://mechanicalcurios.com), an independent workshop where she teaches, practices guilloché, and specializes in the conservation of automata, mechanical magic, mechanical music, and complicated clocks and watches. Her original work has been exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York and she is currently working on a series of bestiary automata inspired by illuminated texts and a manuscript to be published by Penguin Press.

Big Data promises unparalleled insights, but the larger the data, the harder they are to find. The key to unlocking them was discovered by mathematicians in the 18th century. A modern mathematician explains how to find patterns in data with new algorithms for old math. Gurjeet Singh is Chief AI Officer and co-founder of [Symphony AyasdiAI](https://www.ayasdi.com). He leads a technology movement that emphasizes the importance of extracting insight from data, not just storing and organizing it. Beginning with his tenure as a graduate student in Stanford’s Mathematics Department he has developed key mathematical and machine learning algorithms for Topological Data Analysis (TDA) and their applications. Before starting Ayasdi, he worked at Google and Texas Instruments. Dr. Singh holds a Technology degree from Delhi University and a Computational Mathematics Ph.D. from Stanford. He serves on the Technology Advisory Board at HSBC and on the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Technology Advisory Committee. He was named to Silicon Valley Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” list in 02015. Gurjeet lives in Palo Alto with his wife and two children and develops multi-legged robots in his spare time.

Coming to the fore in this century is Asian perspective on everything. A thrilling place to watch the shift is in art. Extraordinary contemporary art from all over the world, especially Asia, has been collected for the new world-class museum in Hong Kong called M+. The massive museum won’t open for a year or two, but a rich sample of the collection as well as insight on why it was collected for display in Hong Kong, will be offered by Suhanya Raffel, Executive Director of M+. Before her appointment in 2016 to run M+, Suhanya Raffel was Deputy Director and Director of Collections at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia, and Acting Director of the Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art. This SALT talk was arranged as part of the partnership between The Long Now Foundation and the Asia Society Northern California.

The invisible backbone of our food system is a man-made, distributed, and perpetual winter of refrigeration we've built for our food to live in. It has remade our entire relationship with food, for better and in some ways for worse. The time has come for us all to explore the mysteries of the artificial cryosphere. We need to understand refrigeration's scope and impact in order to take stock of what’s at stake and make sure that the many benefits of our network of thermal control outweigh the enormous costs. Nicola Twilley is writing the first comprehensive look at the global cold chain, due out in 02019. [Nicola Twilley](https://twitter.com/nicolatwilley) is a frequent contributor to [The New Yorker magazine](https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/nicola-twilley) and a co-host of the podcast "[Gastropod](https://gastropod.com)." She is at work on two books: one about refrigeration and the other on quarantine. She blogs at [EdibleGeography.com](http://www.ediblegeography.com).

“Cities were the first Internet,” says archaeologist Monica Smith, because they were the first permanent places where strangers met in large numbers for entertainment, commerce, and romance. And the function and form of cities, she notes, have remained remarkably constant over their 6,000 years of history so far. Modern city dwellers would quickly find their way around any city in the past, given our shared architecture of broad avenues, monumental structures, and densely crowded residences. What we learn from examining the long history of cities is what makes them so freeing and empowering for humans and humanity. Density has always been crucial. So has infrastructure, skill specialization, cultural diversity, intense trade with other cities, an economy of acquiring and discarding objects, the delights of fashion and art, religious focus and political focus, intellectual ferment, and technological innovation. The digital internet has not replaced cities, nor is it likely that anything else will, Smith proposes, for the next 6,000 years. Monica L. Smith is an anthropology professor and also a professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainabilityat UCLA. She has done archeological fieldwork in India, Bangladesh, Madagascar, Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, Italy, and England. Her new book is [_Cities: The First 6,000 Years_](https://smile.amazon.com/Cities-First-6-000-Years/dp/073522367X/ref=sr_1_1).