Long Now London 2502 - Planetary
TL/DR
New here? This is the monthly gathering for our London community of practice for long-term thinking, at The RSA’s cocktail bar, Muse. 🍸
📬 Please do RSVP here as it is important for us to be able to help our hosts prepare for us.
📖 Some reading: You don’t have to do anything in advance, but we’re suggesting some reading just so people have a prompt for discussion. This month it’s "Reframing the Future" by Patrick Dowd, the new chair of the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco.
More detail below, and we hope to see you there,
~ Chris D
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🍹Our monthly gatherings
Long Now London is a group of people who share an interest in long-term thinking. We have been gathering in a variety of formats, locations and frequencies since 02008. Since 02018 we have met on the second Thursday of the month, usually in a pub, sometimes in a park, and online when necessary. 🍻
🌎 We are an independent local group inspired by the work of the Long Now Foundation and using their name with permission.
We do a variety of things throughout the year, but our monthly gatherings encourage conversations about long-term thinking, 📡 deep time, 🏺 history, 🖌️ art, 🔭 futures, 🛰️ technology, 🔧 maintenance, a wide range of -ologies and -isms depending on the crowd. 🔎
🌍 We are in regular dialogue with other such groups around the world. 🌏 If you would like to be put in touch with like-minded people where you are, please do get in touch.
Oh, and we write the year with an additional digit at the front to guard against the deca-millennium bug; 🦠 to encourage our minds towards further horizons, and also because it’s fun.
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Where
In recent months we have been meeting at Muse - the cocktail bar in RSA House. The RSA (The royal society for the encouragement of arts, manufactures and commerce) has been around since 01754. You can find out more about their work here.
At the start of the evening you can access Muse via the main RSA entrance on John Adam Street, but after a certain point you will have to enter via the designated door round the corner on Adam Street (not John Adam Street!). At that door, press the buzzer and they will come and let you in ASAP. Say you are there for Long Now and you will be directed to us (most likely filling their second room).
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This month’s theme and suggested reading
“More and more I find I want to be living in a big here and a long now” - Brian Eno (Long Now co-founder)
The Long Now London perspective is very much rooted in our place in this diverse city on these islands on the western edge of Europe, while also embracing dialogue with perspectives from other areas of the planet. In the coming months we will be thinking much more locally. This month, however, our theme will be the planetary scale - the "bigger here" that goes with our longer now. We look forward to everyone's reflections in the conversation and the conversations that will ensue.
To help provoke some thinking, our suggested reading is a piece called "Reframing the Future" by Patrick Dowd, on becoming chair of the board in 02024. You don't have to read it, but we would love to know your thoughts if you do.
The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996, initially around the shared aim of the "Clock/Library" project that evolved into several iterations of "The Clock of the Long Now". Patrick is only the second person to hold these posts, appropriate for an organisation dedicated to the long-term.