In August of 02018, Long Now founder Stewart Brand, renowned geneticist George Church, and a delegation of observers and scientists traveled to one of Earth's most remote places to witness the ongoing restoration of a part of Siberia back to its Pleistocene-era ecosystem. The team brought back DNA samples to evaluate for mammoth de-extinction, and lots of photos, video, and stories of a place where climate change and arctic deep time can be witnessed at once. At this event Long Now's Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, and Alexander Rose were joined by filmmakers David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg to discuss the trip and the things they learned along the way.

Human civilization is used to being saved by technology. The 20th century was defined by humanity’s ability to invent a pill, vaccine, or device to overcome our biggest challenges. Today, many of the most serious threats to human health well-being require large-scale changes in individual behavior. The problem is people are really bad at prioritizing long-term goals over their immediate desires and the science of behavior change is still badly underdeveloped. Christopher Bryan's recent research suggests we can motivate long-lasting behavior change by aligning around values. He'll explain how it works.

[Christopher Bryan](https://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/b/christopher-j-bryan) studies persuasion and influence with an emphasis on how subtle differences in framing can shape people’s understanding of a behavior or decision and influence their behavior choices. Behavior choices play a critical role in society’s most daunting policy challenges—climate change, global hunger, and obesity, to name some—and have received increasing attention in academic and policy circles. He is a 02018-19 fellow at the [Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences](http://casbs.stanford.edu/) (CASBS) at Stanford University who are co-producers of this talk.

Scifi author, scientist, and entrepreneur Hannu Rajaniemi discusses the real life late Victorian attempts to map the afterlife which inspired _Summerland_ , his latest novel.

Rajaniemi introduces us to scientists, inventors, misfits, revolutionaries, plus a tour of obscure ideas and bizarre inventions: spirit-powered sewing machines, aetheric knots, the four-dimensional geometry of Lenin’s tomb... What do these actual Victorian obsessions tell us about today’s fascination with intelligent machines and immortality?

Hannu Rajaniemi was born in Finland, obtained his PhD in string theory at the University of Edinburgh and now works as a co-founder and CTO of HelixNano, a synthetic biology startup based in the Bay Area. He is the author of four novels including [The _Quantum Thief_ trilogy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quantum_Thief) and _Summerland_.

The ocean is not just filling up, it’s swelling up. Half of sea-level rise comes just from the warming of the water. No matter what humans do next, we are now doomed to deal with drastically higher flooding of the world's coasts every year for decades, possibly centuries. Nearly half of humanity lives near coasts. Many of our greatest cities, and their infrastructure, will have to deal with the ever-rising waters.

Some coasts in the world are already experiencing what is coming for every coast soon. Jeff Goodell's reports from those places are doubly grim. The harm is already huge, but the response of local people is even more disturbing. With few exceptions, they and their governments refuse to accept that the problem is permanent and will keep getting worse. Those most affected by global warming—rich and poor—remain perversely in denial about it.

There’s lots of talk, but humanity is doing almost nothing to adapt to sea level rise. So far.

Jeff Goodell is author of [_The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World_](https://smile.amazon.com/Water-Will-Come-Remaking-Civilized-ebook/dp/B06XFL2TJF/ref=sr_1_1) (2017), How To Cool the Planet (2010), and Big Coal (2006).

The warming planet is increasingly the subject of all kinds of fiction. Beyond entertainment or distraction could climate fiction (“Cli-Fi”) actually help us in solving the climate dilemma? Biological anthropologist and environmental scientist [James Holland Jones](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0_6ULyIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao) explains the neuroscience of narrative: storytelling fits the human brain. Stories might be useful in bringing popular attention to climate and inspiring action on environmental issues.

[James Holland Jones](https://people.stanford.edu/jhj1/) is an Associate Professor of Earth System Science and a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. His research combines human ecology, infectious disease dynamics, social network analysis, and biodemography. Some current research interests include: Climate Change, Mobility, and Infectious Disease; The Evolution of Human Economic Preferences; The Evolution of Human Life Histories; Network-Informed Control of Ebola Virus Disease. He previously spoke at The Interval in 02017 about [Evolutionary Perspective On Behavioral Economics](https://theinterval.org/salon-talks/02017/jan/17/rationality-redeemed-evolutionary-perspective-behavioral-economics) following his fellowship year at the [Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences](https://casbs.stanford.edu/) (CASBS).

Throughout human history, mapping has been the key to the opening of new frontiers. Mapping of previously uncharted regions has enabled economic expansion and the development of new markets, science, and defense. For similar reasons, mapping the locations and trajectories of the millions of uncharted asteroids in our solar system is the key to opening the space frontier. This four-dimensional space map will be crucial to the economic development of space, the protection of the Earth from asteroid impacts, and to understanding the origin and evolution of Earth. Join [Dr. Ed Lu](https://b612foundation.org/members/ed-lu/), former NASA astronaut, co-founder of [B612 Foundation](https://b612foundation.org/) and the current Executive Director of the Asteroid Institute as he makes the case for the need to chart the high frontier of space and learn how you can help.

Dr. Ed Lu, Executive Director of the [Asteroid Institute](https://b612foundation.org/), served as a NASA Astronaut for twelve years. He flew aboard the Space Shuttle twice, flew on the Russian Soyuz to the International Space Station and has logged over 206 days in space. Dr. Lu has been an active research scientist working in the fields of solar physics, astrophysics, plasma physics, cosmology, and planetary science. He held positions at the High Altitude Observatory, the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, and the Institute for Astronomy. At Google, he led the Advanced Projects group which built imaging and data gathering systems for Google Earth and Maps, Google StreetView, and Google Books. He is a co-founder of B612 Foundation, the only organization in the world dedicated to finding, mapping and deflecting asteroids.

What can fifty-somethings bring of value to companies that are mostly twenty-somethings, and vice versa? A needed blending of depth with currency.

Chip Conley, a long-time hotelier (Joie de Vivre Hospitality) and author _(Peak; The Rebel Rules; Emotional Equations)_, was hired at 52 by the drastically youthful, disruptive startup Airbnb to be its Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy. He found he was simultaneously an intern learning the digital ropes and a seasoned veteran mentoring the company’s leadership. Expanding beyond the traditional Silicon Valley role of “executive whisperer,” Conley led the company’s focus on its countless hosts worldwide.

His new book, _[Wisdom @ Work: The Making of a Modern Elder](https://smile.amazon.com/Wisdom-Work-Making-Modern-Elder/dp/0525572902/ref=sr_1_1)_ , makes the case for intergenerational savvy in organizations and explores what it takes to become a useful elder these days. A jolt of rejuvenation comes with the job.

John Brockman's newly released book [_Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI_](https://smile.amazon.com/Possible-Minds-Twenty-Five-Ways-Looking-ebook/dp/B07D6C1X3X/ref=sr_1_1) is the springboard for this Seminar on Artificial Intelligence. Brockman will interview several of the contributors to the book, [Rodney Brooks](https://www.edge.org/memberbio/rodney_a_brooks), [Alison Gopnik](https://www.edge.org/memberbio/alison_gopnik) and [Stuart Russell](https://www.edge.org/memberbio/stuart_russell) on stage. Following the interviews, [Kevin Kelly](https://www.edge.org/memberbio/kevin_kelly) hosted the Q&A and discussion with the group.

**John Brockman** is founder and publisher of the online salon [Edge.org](https://www.edge.org/), a website devoted to discussions of cutting-edge science by many of the world's foremost thinkers, the leaders of what he has termed "the third culture."

**Rodney Brooks** is a computer scientist and roboticist, former Director (1997-2007) of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and founder of [Rethink Robotics](https://www.rethinkrobotics.com/) and [iRobot Corp](https://www.irobot.com/).

**Alison Gopnik** is a professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. Her areas of expertise are in cognitive and language development, with specialties in the effect of language on thought, the development of a theory of mind, and causal learning.

**Stuart Russell** is a computer scientist focused on artificial intelligence and computational physiology. He is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley and Adjunct Professor of Neurological Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco.

**Kevin Kelly** is a Long Now Board member, founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and a former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Review. He is a writer, photographer, conservationist, and editor and publisher of the [Cool Tools](https://kk.org/cooltools/) website.

To think usefully about humanity’s future, you have to bear everything in mind simultaneously. Nobody has managed that better than Martin Rees in his succinct summing-up book: _ON THE FUTURE: Prospects for Humanity_.

As the recent President of the Royal Society (and longtime Royal Astronomer), Rees is current with all the relevant science and technology. At 76, he has seen a lot of theories about the future come and go. He has expert comfort in thinking at cosmic scale and teaching the excitement of that perspective. He has explored the darkest scenarios in a previous book, _OUR FINAL HOUR: A Scientist’s Warning_ (2004), which examined potential extreme threats from nuclear weapons, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, climate change, and terrorism. Civilization’s greatest danger comes from civilization itself, which now operates at planetary scale. Consequently, he says, to head off the hazards and realize humanity’s potentially fabulous prospects, "We need to think globally, we need to think rationally, we need to think long-term.”

And we can.

“What is life?”

In her Long Now Talk, astrobiologist and theoretical physicist Sara Imari Walker explores the many dimensions of that seemingly simple question.

Starting from the simplest precursors, Walker assembled a grand cathedral of meaning, tracing an arc across existence that linked the fundamentals of organic chemistry, the possibility space of lego bricks, and the materialist philosophy of Madonna.

As the leader of one of the largest international theory groups in the origins of life and astrobiology, Walker has worked an interdisciplinary team of researchers to devise assembly theory: a theory of life and its origins that finds that life is the only way to create complex objects, and that the existence of complex objects is fundamentally and quantifiably rare. Assembly theory’s focus on complexity and countability allows astrobiologists like Walker to grapple with the sheer vastness of combinatorial space — the set of all things that could possibly exist.

That set is vaster than the universe itself can hold, which, of course, raises a foundational question: if the universe cannot exhaust all possibilities of what can exist, what determines what actually exists, and what merely could exist?

Assembly theory uses the concept of the "assembly index" to measure the complexity of objects in the universe, quantifying how many steps are required to build something — a molecule like ATP, the primary energy-carrier in cells, for example. The theory finds that items above a given assembly index of 15 cannot be produced repeatedly by any known process save for life itself — a complexity threshold governed by the size of the possibility space. Implied here is that matter itself holds information. Within the physical dimensions and history of any given object is a measure of the information required to construct it. Likewise, historical contingency matters: it determines what gets constructed within the space of all theoretically possible constructions.

In Walker's words: "We are our history."

Life is causal histories — lineages of propagating information. Assembly theory conceptualizes objects as entities defined by their possible formation histories, allowing a unified language for describing selection, evolution and the generation of novelty. Within assembly theory, the fundamental unit of life is not the cell, but the lineage.