Programming for the Long Now
Started 2008-10-18
Outline Notes and Questions
Organizations are too limiting and too focussed on the short term.
- without progress we quit.
- without evidence we quit.
- if it's not fun now we quit.
- if we haven't met for six months, we already quit ("I thought we disbanded?")
What would a group of likeminded individuals who are in it for the long term look like? What ideas and attitudes would they have in common? Methods are fluid but what would their principles be? Commitment, openness (to new members and new ideas), desire to learn, not tied to one model / paradigm / agenda.
Is it possible to extend the influence of a single group beyond the lives (or spheres of influence) of any of the members?
Organizations of shared technical interest tend to operate too much like the corporations at which many of the members work. [Technology] Users Group limits my time, input, and output to a single topic.
Am I looking for something that is not an organizations, or simple an organiation that cannot be described in terms of existing affinity networks?
MODEL: Masons / Secret Society, except not secret; Idea Society; Think Tank; mutual aid, greater good, learning all the time, bring an interesting problem, solved (by yourself) or unsolved.
TODO: Examine other intellectuall organizations, or organizations of intellectuals.
I believe there is room for an association of programmers and thinkers that is based at its root on nothing more than the shared interest of its members in continuing to learn as far into the future as we (as humans) can concieve. I believe there are problems deserving solutions that will require people working and learning together for a long time to solve.
Links
Essays
Organizations
Blog Posts
Quotes
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988)