Stuart Candy, of the Hawaii Center for Future Studies and Fellow of Long Now Foundation was speaking this evening at a Long Now London meetup.

The Clock of the Long Now is not so much about building a clock as building a culture around the clock.
The story goes that Long Now co-founder Stewart Brand was under the influence of LSD on top of a building in San Francisco in the 60s, and thought he saw the tops of the buildings diverging (an effect of the curvature of the earth). The next day he had badges produced: "Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?". From this the Whole Earth Catalog and the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) were born.
The Long Now is doing for time what Whole Earth did for space.
We are programmed for continuity while living through discontinuity. "Building bridges across the experiential gulf", the gulf between the way we project (our feelings about) the future and how we experience it when it happens.
Guerrilla futures: ad-hoc incursions into future worlds, and finding ways to manifest future worlds in the present, whether people want them or not.
"Better to be surprised by a simulation than blind-sided by a reality."
Bruce Sterling asked 'What would happen if you changed "guerrilla" interventions into a "regular standing army"?'
"Ambient foresight" foresight as an emergent property; implicit, incidental, enabling.

• Nutrition facts on food
• Pictures of lung cancer on cigarette packs
• Carbon facts on products

Umbrella from Ambient Devices that has a handle that glows when it's about to rain (is linked up to meteorological service).
 

Q&A

A cranial osteopath, cites Susan Greenfield, and says she used to have children coming to her with colic and asthma, but now it's all that they can't sleep. Even in the womb their mothers are getting so stimulated that babies don't "just sleep" like they used to.
Vicissitudes of institutionalising foresight: government initiatives start up and do good work for a while, but then the government changes and doesn't want to hear certain things.

Classy piece of journalism a few days ago from the mighty Music Week

Friday December 19, 2008
By Alan Jones
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...little did Charles Dickens know when he penned the opening line of his classic Tale Of Two Cities 149 years ago that it was a sentiment that could be applied to the US albums market for last week.

Well, well.  Little did Alan Jones know when he blackberried that breathtaking opening that the US albums market for last week was exactly what Dickens had in mind in 1859. Much of his oeuvre, as music journalists might call it, was a veiled allegory that foresaw the P2P wars, DRM, and copyright debate. I mean, when you think about, what else could he possibly have been referring to in that introduction?

Because Andy was too polite to tag anyone. Because it's Friday evening. Because I'm on my second large whisky. And because I'd never given much thought to my favourite actresses before, here is a list of them:

• Gloria Grahame
• Veronica Lake
• Holly Hunter
• Meryl Streep
• Sabine Azéma
• Julianne Moore
  

[only just over half way and I'm already struggling...]

• Juliette Binoche

[hmmm, there are others, including some British ones, but the whisky is hiding them from me]

1. The carbon footprint of Facebook is half that of New York City (per capita) -- source
2. The carbon footprint of a Second Life avatar is the same as that of an average Brazilian -- source: Ian Mulvany (or a Mexican, according to Paul Sanders)
3. The carbon footprint of the production process of an Apple MacBook is the same as flying to Moscow and back -- source: Steve Lawson
   

I made myself my usual Saturday morning double espresso today, got my pencil and prepared to get stuck into David Allen's Getting Things Done: How to Achieve Stress-free Productivity, making notes as I went.

I got waylaid on my way to the kitchen and into the garden, and picked up K Foundation Burn a Million Quid. I intended just to flick through it, but it caught my attention, and absorbed my next hour and a bit. I never opened Getting Things Done. But, at the end, I felt a strong sense of achievement and satisfaction.

Here's a bunch of books I have bought in the last few weeks:

• Bill Drummond -- The 17
• Murray Bookchin -- Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm
• Tim Etchells -- The Broken World
• Dan & Chip Heath -- Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Take Hold and Others Come Unstuck
• Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini -- Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion
• Guy Claxton & Bill Lucas -- The Creative Thinking Plan: How to Generate Ideas and Solve Problems in Your Work and Life
• Guy Claxton -- Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: Why Intelligence Increases When You Think Less

I want to read them all immediately. Only one problem: I have a three-week-old son, and not a lot of spare time.

...at least if the royalties they charge for use of their material are high enough to make torture uneconomic.

Lucy and I had a holiday in the Cornwall and Devon at the end of last month and beginning of this one (photos). In the Truro Sainsbury's on the way down I opted to eschew the usual selection of bitter for what seemed like a good range of ciders. This became a mini-theme for the holiday, and here are my notes from it.

Henny's Dry Cider

• 6% Alcohol, made from 100% fresh pressed juice.
• Made in Herefordshire, Frome Valley
• No artificial sweeteners or colourings but it does have sulphites 'to preserve freshness'
• http://www.henneys.co.uk

I'd say 'medium dry': actually It's a bit disappointing and undistinctive somehow. Like a slightly less fizzy Dry Blackthorn and no more.

Sainsbury's Organic West Country Cider

• 6% Alcohol
• Made in Herefordshire
• Contains sulphites as preservatives

Sounds familiar? Yes, and tastes familiar, too. One other thing: is Herefordshire really the West Country?

Stowford Press

• On draught in Royal Standard, Flushing
• Brewed by Westons, another Herefordshire cider
• http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews132120.html

Light, not too fizzy. Subtle taste, verging on weak, but pleasantly dry.

Cidre de Récoltant, Duché de Longueville

• Produced exclusively from pure pressed apple juice
• Made with a minimum of 90% Gros Oeillet apples
• Contains sulphites
• http://www.emporiabrands.com

Well at least we're out of Hertfordshire (and into Nomandy). This is sweeter than anything else so far — though it still calls itself dry — but the sweetness is in the aftertaste. In this, and more generally, it reminds me strongly of Taunton Autumn Gold.

Strongbow

• On draught in The Seven Stars, Flushing

This is like an average of all other dry ciders, or a common denominator. It's neither disappointing nor exciting. It's fizzy, but not oppressively so.I bet it has lots of sulphites.

Merrydown

• Doesn't say where it's from, but made to "a unique Sussex recipe" since 1946, including "champagne yeast and selected eating apples"
• 7.5% alcohol
• Contains sulphites
• http://www.merrydown.co.uk

This was always my staple at university, especially at garden parties: it's summery, not too many people like it (so, more for me) and its incredibly alcoholic, almost as strong as wine. The taste is a little thinner than the others, but it's genuinely dry, and I still like it.

Scrumpy Willey, West Country Farm Cider

• 6% alcohol
• Contains sulphites, sugar and sweeteners

I bought this in Falmouth to get something that was genuinely from the west country, and the address is from a Bristol postcode. I couldn't buy one of the flagons of sweet scrumpy, because they were too big. However, as you can tell from the title, it's not aimed at the sophisticated end of the market. I don't like it much; it's on the edge of being vinegary.

Drummer's Leg (?)

• On draught at The Forest Inn, Hexworthy

This is the real thing, and it's a fairly unforgiving experience. A genuinely local Devon cider, which made me wince slightly on first taste, as it felt very close to the dividing line with vinegar. I enjoyed it a little more with more experience, but I think it would take a while to acquire the taste for drinking it regularly or in volume. I left a couple of centimetres in the bottom of my pint.

Aspalls Suffolk Cyder

• On draught in the Dartmoor Halfway Inn, Bickington

Very nice this one — possibly closest to Merrydown.

Thatchers Dry Cider

• On draught in the Sandy Park Inn, Dartmoor

A bit of a disappointment: anonymous, and not immediately distinguishable from the mainstream ciders, while not as pleasant as Stowford Press

So, I've been with with Vodafone for nine and a half years, and increasingly pissed off with how the deals they advertise to new customers are so much better than those available to loyal customers. The occasion of leaving them, then, offers an opportunity to savour in playing the part of "You've wronged me, you evil capitalist corporation, and now liddl'ol me's going to get my revenge by leaving you, and there's nothing you can do to stop me..." in response to their anticipated begging that "we'll be nice and friendly from now on, promise".

But I made a mistake. They asked me if there was any particular reason why I wanted to leave.

"Yes, there are two," I told them, winding up for my first salvo of complaints. "The first is that I quite fancy an iPhone..."

"Ah, well, say no more," came the interruption. "Don't blame you" (I'm not actually quoting directly, but it was words and sentiments to that effect).

And with that, Vodafone accepted defeat, and I lost the opportunity to do my longsuffering bleeding heart act. Damn.