Long-term materials testing on the ISS

The Long Now Foundation 20/11/2008 00:11

Through our partnership with Applied Minds we were invited to include one of our materials on a NASA material experiment called MISSE on the International Space Station. We included a sample of commercially pure titanium, that was black oxide coated, and laser etched (pictured below). This is the same material/process that we made the front side of the Rosetta Disk out of. Now we get to find out how well the disk would hold up if exposed to open space for several years…

sample

This experiment is a continuation of sorts of the material research started back in 01984 with the Long Duration Exposure Facility that Kevin Kelly posted about earlier.

Drew Endy & Jim Thomas Synthetic Biology Debate

The Long Now Foundation 18/11/2008 22:17

Monday November 17, 02008

Drew Endy and Jim Thomas

Terms of biocontainment

“I want to develop tools that make biology easy to engineer,” Drew Endy began. The first purpose is better understanding fundamental biological mechanisms through “learning by building.” The toolkit of Synthetic Biology starts with DNA construction and ascends through DNA parts, to devices, to standardized systems. An organism’s DNA code, and therefore the organism, can be digitally uploaded, stored, distributed, and downloaded. Life forms are programmable. So far 3,500 standard “BioBrick” parts have been developed for free distribution, and the number is growing geometrically. The number of amateur and student bioengineers also is growing geometicallly.

“There are 20,000 edible plant species,” Endy noted. “At present we eat only 30.” Synthetic biology can help diversify agriculture. Or how about engineering a gourd that can grow into a living house?

Endy concluded with five questions… Should teenagers practice genetic engineering? (Yes.) Should military weapons involve biotechnology? (No.) Should BioBrick parts be patented or freely shared? (Free.) Will biohackers be good or bad? (Good, if we help.) Should genetic engineers sign their work and publish it? (Yes.)

Jim Thomas asked Endy how he would defend against commercial interests locking up Synthetic Biology with patents? Endy said the best hope is building an open-source community that grows faster than businesses and out-innovates them.

Thomas began his statement by pointing out that it usually takes a whole generation to understand a new technology, so he urges moving slowly and cautiously, but Synthetic Biology is advancing at breakneck speed, and the window of opportunity to have effective public discussion and control is closing.

He cited the history of synthetic chemicals, which began in mid-19th century. The technology quickly became highly concentrated in an oligarchy of monopolistic companies, and then it was easliy commandeered by government in wartime. I.G. Farben supplied the poison gas for the death camps. “Powerful technology in an unjust world is likely to exacerbate the injustice.”

Thomas said he worries when he hears comments like, “Anything that can be made by a plant can be made by a microbe.” If that’s played out, it means the death knell for everyone who works in agriculture, a vast economic restructuring. There’s so much novelty coming so fast from Synthetic Biology, no predictive models or regulatory models can hold them. He recommends these new tools be strictly contained so there is no release of new life forms into the biosphere, and there should be no commercialization of the technology at all.

Endy asked Thomas if it’s okay to make anything in a bioreactor vat? Thomas said, “Yes, beer.”

For different reasons, both debaters wanted to see Synthetic Biology kept from domination by commercial patents. For Thomas, it would lead to unjust monopoly answering only to profit. For Endy, it would paralyze open-ended research.

–Stewart Brand

Land art listed and iconified

The Long Now Foundation 17/11/2008 22:18

Kevin Kelly sent in this well organized site of US land art with spiffy icons, GPS coordinates and websites for each. (Spiral Jetty, Star Axis and Roden Craters icons shown above).

Underground Wonders

The Long Now Foundation 13/11/2008 19:15

This is an updated post of one of my early blog entries here at the Blog of the Long Now. Over the last couple years I have found even more amazing underground and stonework spaces. Since we hope to build the space for the 10,000 Year Clock underground, for the last 10 years I have been collecting references and images of the great, ambitious, and or inspiring underground spaces and stonework of the world (in some cases they are also lessons of what not to do). I thought I would list some of that collection here to share them, as well as ask for any recommendations or references you all might have. ( I continue to collect so please send along your favorites.) You can click through most of the images below to colelctions of images or blow ups of the shown image.

(more…)

Long Now Wine Gets High Marks

The Long Now Foundation 13/11/2008 18:49

Long Now’s eponymous red wine by the Pelissero winery was recently reviewed by Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate. Both the 2005 and 2006 vintages received “outstanding” ratings of 92.

Antonio Galloni says,

The 2005 Long Now possesses awesome richness, nuance and detail. A blend of Nebbiolo and Barbera, it sweeps across the palate with tons of dense, layered fruit. The wine’s considerable richness covers the tannins nicely, but there is plenty of structure underneath. This is a gem from Giorgio Pelissero. Anticipated maturity: 2010-2018.

and

The estate’s 2006 Long Now (Nebbiolo, Barbera) is a massive, powerful wine. With some time in the glass its voluptuous dark fruit gradually comes forward, enhanced by overtones of minerals, spices, toasted oak and menthol. This remains a very reticent, brooding wine in need of several years of bottle age, yet it is very promising. Anticipated maturity: 2011-2021.

The Pelissero winery is a 3rd generation winery in the Piedmont area of Italy that has been growing wine grapes for several millennia. They are traditionally known for their Nebbiolo and Barbera grapes. The Long Now wine is their first blend of the two grapes, and we were honored that they named it after our project. The labels are printed with archival inks on acid free paper and the corks are flame marked “Long Now”.

Pelissero’s Long Now wine can be purchased at various online wine merchants such as Vinfolio or International Cellar. The Long Now Store page lists outlets in California carrying the wine. Some of the older vintages have received similar ratings and recent in house tests here at Long Now confirm they are maturing wonderfully :)

Adivasi Academy students work to save indigenous languages of India

The Long Now Foundation 12/11/2008 00:39

Students at the Adivasi Academy

In a remote region of India, students at the Adivasi Academy are working to save their tribal languages, and through their languages, their tribal cultures and knowledge as well. They certainly have their work cut out for them — many of the students have had to devise writing systems for their historically unwritten native tongues only to embark on the herculean task of developing dictionaries, grammars and other major reference works (consider that Noah Webster’s dictionary was the product of decades of work — and a dictionary is but one part of these students’ undertaking.)

The term adivasi refers to the indigenous people of India, who belong to remote tribal groups and speak many different dialects. These languages are rapidly being engulfed by urban languages with greater economic utility and prestige. One student, Kantilal Mahala, a speaker of the Kunkna [Konkani] language remarked, In my village, people who move ahead speak only Gujarati. They feel ashamed of our language.” But documentation projects like these can help change perceptions, raising the prestige of the language and its speakers through a new written standard and medium for wider communication — this, and the fact of the Academy’s very existence, which affirms ‘we are here, and we are worth this effort.’

Read the original article on the Adivasi Academy in The New York Times
Visit the Adivasi Academy website
See the documentation we have on Konkani and related languages in The Rosetta Project archive

Macro to micro etching

The Long Now Foundation 03/11/2008 19:18

The final technical hurdle of the Rosetta Disk Project has finally been overcome. (See Kevin Kelly’s write up of this project here) We are distributing three of the disks to their owners this month and have two remaining of this first edition.

We now have both the sides of the disk micro-etched. The front human eye readable side (pictured above) was a challenge as it had etching that went from very large to the very small. The eight outer spiraling texts start with characters about a centimeter high and end up with characters a few hundred microns high. And the language names surrounding the earth image were small enough we had to get a special engravers style font made in Germany to make sure they would stay legible. This side of the disk was etched into commercially pure titanium that was coated with a black oxide coating. This coating was then etched through with an eximer laser by a micro-etching company Norsam Technologies. One of their challenges was etching the center of the letters as well as the outlines. They had to create a crosshatching pattern for the 10 micron wide eximer beam to pass back and forth over the fill areas. Each one takes over 36 hours to etch.

Each of these are mated up with the other micro etched side of the disk with over 13,000 pages of language translations in a stainless bezel. (see below)

There are still two of these remaining for any donor to the Rosetta Project of at least $25,000 (Contact Laura if interested). They each come in a protective stainless and glass spherical protective case.

When you open the case and lift out the disk, there is a space underneath which holds a strip of stainless and a stylus to allow each generation who owns that Rosetta disk to mark down their ownership (pictured at the top of this post).

It took us eight years to get to this point. Whew.

Fashion on an evolutionary scale

The Long Now Foundation 29/10/2008 23:52

Image from Perroquet (02008) by Sølve Sundsbø, at SHOWstudio

Inspired by science photography and nature documentaries, Norwegian fashion photographer Sølve Sundsbø produced an art exhibition called Perroquet, comprising a stunning series of photographs and slow-motion videos showing the spectacular plumage and graceful movement of a slender, long-tailed parrot in flight.

This particular subject matter couldnt be more removed from Sundsbøs lavish editorial spreads and striking campaign imagery, although his reasons for choosing this particular species do, in a way, relate to fashion. Possessing almost sartorial qualities, it was the birds trademark vibrant plumage that piqued the photographers interest. Sundsbø looks to this as fashion on an evolutionary scale: compared to the fast-paced, demanding nature of the fashion calendar and the many ‘looks’ each season produces, this creatures stunning ‘outfit’ has taken centuries to develop.
…
It was always Sundsbø’s chief intention to document the parroquet [sic] using photography and film; both mediums enabling him to steal moments that would normally be missed. … The photographs present ‘frozen moments’ of the bird’s journey; rather than showing its full body, the cropped viewpoints bring abstract qualities to Sundsbø’s powerful images.

~Perroquet Project Description at SHOWstudio

(The videos are wonderful also, but they are not, it seems, capable of being embedded in other websites: check them out here.)

One thing that strikes me about this project is the unusual and satisfyingly elegant way that it brings together domains normally dealt with by people using different languages and techniques: that is, in my mind at least, the nature documentarian and fashion photographer seem almost to inhabit different worlds. But here, Sundsbø brings his studio skills to bear on a natural marvel, taking fashion and nature — processes typically, and reasonably enough, placed at opposite ends of the temporal spectrum, as in Stewart Brand’s “layers of time” diagram — and putting them on the same footing. Generally speaking, nature may move at a rate orders of magnitude slower than fashion, but that inexorable evolutionary process somehow contrives not merely to keep pace with fashion’s breathless pursuit of beauty, but indeed to remind us, time and again, what beauty is.

Photo from Perroquet (02008) by Sølve Sundsbø, at SHOWstudio

[via BoingBoing]

Convergence08 Unconference

The Long Now Foundation 28/10/2008 22:51

The Convergence08 Unconference on Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno (NBIC) technologies and their interactions will be held November 15-16, 02008, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Long Now Members receive a discount on the registration price - check your email for more information.

Long Now Board Member Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley forecaster with over two decades experience exploring long-term technological change and its practical impact on business and society, will keynote the event.

“A host of technologies that seemed like daring science fiction just a few years ago are racing toward practical application with breathtaking speed. Convergence08 is a unique opportunity to look into the coming NBIC future, examine its implications, and prepare for the vast surprises in store for us all.” Paul Saffo

Each of the 2 days starts and ends with an eye-opening debate or keynote to inspire, and the remaining agenda is created by conference participants; the planning has already started on the Convergence08 wiki.

reCaptcha your wasted time

The Long Now Foundation 28/10/2008 20:22

Surreptitious crowd sourced book digitizing… one word at a time.

Last night I attended the Internet Archive’s Open Content Alliance meeting. I was really amazed by how far their book scanning, (over a million books now), and contextualizing projects have come. The two most amazing things were the blog embed tools for the scanned book interface (more on that soon), and the most amazing use of Captcha technology I have seen. One of the inventors of Captcha’s, those funny squiggly words used to prove your a human when you sign up for something, has now put this wasted time and human brain power to work.

ReCaptcha is now getting its difficult to decipher words from scanning projects like the Internet Archive’s and is using the human effort to digitize the words the computer cant recognize. Over a half million man hours a year can now go to digitizing books instead of just wasting your time.

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