Long Now online

Photos from recent talks at The Interval at Long Now in San Francisco.

Announcing the Fund of the Long Now, Long Now’s first step in becoming a truly long-term institution. Make a tax-deductible gift and help long-term thinking grow for centuries…

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A few spaces are left for The Interval at Long Now's Cocktail Mechanics class--makes a great gift or treat yourself

Here’s the latest from Long Now Executive Director Alexander Rose, and then a short documentary on our 10,000 Year Clock Project featuring never before seen images of the design and construction of the Clock; plus interviews with Danny Hillis, Stewart Brand and Alexander. We hope you enjoy it!

A few weeks back at The Interval the distillers from St. George Spirits were interviewed as part of the West Coast Cocktails Oral History Project. Check out these great photos by photographer Michael David Rose.

The multi-millennial time scale of The Rosetta Disk is intended to raise questions in the here and now about the long-term archival strategies for the precious resources we are working so hard to collect and preserve for the future!

Second in a series by Rosetta Project Director Laura Welcher (first post is here)

The First Step In Long-term Archiving Is To Have A Plan For Archiving...

In the past, when researchers created language documentation on paper or made analog audio recordings, it would be possible to set these resources aside and ignore them for years, or even a lifetime. This practice was previously very common. Eventually, some of these materials were given to language archives or in the case of large collections, archives were created to preserve and provide access to them. While this scenario is far from ideal, at least once the materials were kept in reasonable condition, they remained in a more or less stable and usable condition.

Today, we create digital language documentation. And while there are many advantages to digital formats, given rapid changes in technology, digital resources that are ignored for even a few years become vulnerable and potentially inaccessible. As producers of digital language resources, we must be diligent in their care if we want them to last. This diligence need not be the sole responsibility of the researcher. In fact, a much better plan is for the researchers to partner with a language archive that will be the destination for the resources the researcher will create.