​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 context: There’s no required reading. If you've not heard the term "scenius" before, then this is a good place to start. If you've already read that, then this counterpoint may be of interest.

​​More detail below (eventually including more about this month’s theme). We hope to see you there.

​​~ Chris D

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​🍹About these 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

​Since late 02024 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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​Theme and suggested reading 

​"Scenius" is a slightly awkward word, but it does feel useful. Brian Eno (him again) coined the term in his 1996 book "A Year with Swollen Appendices" as a counterpoint to the "Great Man" theory of history:

​I call this ‘scenius’ - it means ‘the intelligence and intuition of a whole cultural scene’. It is the communal form of the concept of genius.

​I became (and still am) more and more convinced that the important changes in cultural history were actually the product of very large numbers of people and circumstances conspiring to make something new... New ideas come into being through a whole host of complicated circumstances, accidents, small incremental contributions made in isolation (as well as gifted individuals, of course) that in total add up to something qualitatively different: something nobody has ever seen before and which could not have been predicted from the elements that went to make it up.

​Kevin Kelly (another from that first generation of the Long Now Foundation) wrote it up pretty well here.

​It's interesting to wonder how this might have been altered by the state of 21st century cities and the increase in online communications. There's a bit more about that here.

​We're interested in thinking and talking about this in general, but also because we're wondering just what this might be that we have nurtured into being here in London. What is Long Now London? What might it be? How might we collaborate or support each other in our endeavours? All suggestions welcome. All conversations interesting. Please come and play your part in them, whatever it might be.