Stewart Brand - We Are As Gods And Have To Get Good At It

Stewart Brand - SALT: Seminars About Long-term Thinking [9.18.14]

Economic policy can seem abstract and distant, but it manifests the physical world – affecting us all. Our economic stories shape our systems, and they in turn shape us. What myths continue to constrain us, and how might new stories emerge to scaffold the future? This talk will explore concepts we often take as gospel: profits, competition, economic value, efficiency, and others -- and asks how we might reshape them to better serve planetary flourishing –today, and well into the future.

Denise Hearn is a writer, applied researcher, and advisor focused on how economic power and paradigms shape our world. Hearn holds an MBA from Oxford Saïd Business School and advises governments, financial institutions, companies, and nonprofits on antitrust, economic policy, and new economic thinking. Hearn is currently a Resident Senior Fellow at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment and co-authored The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition (02018) with Jonathan Tepper.

Hearn's work is published in The Financial Times, The Globe and Mail, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Bloomberg, and The Washington Post and she currently writes the Embodied Economics newsletter. Hearn is also Advisory Board Chair of The Predistribution Initiative — a multi-stakeholder project to improve investment structures and practices to address systemic risks like inequality, biodiversity loss, and climate change.

This event is part of the Long Now Talks series, started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world's most interesting thinkers.

The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility. Our work encourages imagination at the timescale of civilization — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan we call the long now. Our work began with The Clock of the Long Now, an immense mechanical monument, installed in a mountain, designed to keep accurate time for the next 10,000 years.

Each month our Talks series invite a speaker to explore their work in the context of the next and last 10,000 years. The Talks are recorded live in San Francisco, many of them at The Interval,  our public gathering space. Featuring craft cocktails, artisan coffee and tea, a library that stretches from floor to ceiling, and prototypes of The Clock of the Long Now, our space aims to inspire curiosity and wonder.

You can support these Talks by becoming a Long Now member:
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Our global membership program connects over 11,000 individuals across more than 65 countries to a whole world of long-term thinking. Members hear about upcoming speakers first and can reserve two free tickets to attend in-person.

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Denise Hearn - Embodied Economies: How our Economic Stories Shape the World

Annotations and transcribed highlights: http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/06/16/neil-gaiman-how-stories-last

Recorded at the Long Now Foundation (http://longnow.org/) on June 9, 2015. 

Follow @https://soundcloud.com/longnow and subscribe to the podcast of their excellent seminars on long-term thinking on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/seminars-about-long-term-thinking/id186908455?mt=2

MORE / TRANSCRIPT

Neil Gaiman on how stories last

The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996* to encourage and foster long-term thinking and responsibility through a variety of projects including a clock designed to last 10,000 years (now being constructed in Texas), a monthly seminar series about long-term thinking, and the Rosetta Project which documents and preserves the diversity of human languages. Find out more at http://longnow.org

Long Now’s founders and board of directors include pioneering scientists, writers, technologists, artists and futurists such as Brian Eno, Danny Hillis, David Eagleman, David Rumsey, Douglas Carlston, Esther Dyson, Katherine Fulton, Kevin Kelly, Kim Polese, Michael Keller, Paul Saffo, Peter Schwartz, Ping Fu and Stewart Brand. 

The Long Now Foundation is headquartered in San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center. Projects of the Long Now Foundation include:

    The 10,000 year clock:  http://longnow.org/clock/
    The Interval at Long Now:  https://theinterval.org
    The Rosetta Project:  http://rosettaproject.org
    Seminars About Long-term Thinking:  http://longnow.org/seminars/
    Revive & Restore:  http://reviverestore.org

*Long Now always uses five-digit dates, the extra zero in anticipation of the potential deca-millennium bug which may arise in about 8,000 years.

Denise Hearn - Embodied Economies: How our Economic Stories Shape the World

The Long Now Foundation

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