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

How would someone fare if they were dropped into a randomly chosen period in history? Would they have any relevant knowledge to share, or ability to invent crucial technologies given the period's constraints? Ryan North uses these hypothetical questions to explore the technological and implicit knowledge underpinning modern civilization, offering a practical guide of how one could rebuild civilization from the ground up.

Ryan North is an author, comic creator and humorist whose recent work includes the non-fiction books How To Take Over The World and How To Invent Everything. He's creator of Dinosaur Comics and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl series for Marvel, along with many other books, comics and writing and his work has been translated into 16 different languages so far. North has a degree in Computational Linguistics and is known for his witty and useful explanations of technology, tools and problem solving.

“How to Invent Everything” was given on January 31, 02022 as part of The Long Now Foundation's Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world's leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand. To follow the talks, you can:

Subscribe to our podcasts: https://longnow.org/seminars/podcast
Explore the full series: https://longnow.org/talks
Read more ideas on long-term thinking: https://longnow.org/ideas

The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility. Our projects include a 10,000 Year Clock, endangered language preservation, thousand year+ data storage, and Long Bets, an arena for accountable predictions.

Become a Long Now member to support this series, join our community, and connect with our ongoing work to explore and deepen long-term thinking: https://longnow.org/membership

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Seminars About Long-term Thinking

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Ryan North - How to Invent Everything

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

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

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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.

Ryan North - How to Invent Everything

The Long Now Foundation

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