The Protocol Institute is a research, education, media, and scene-making organization dedicated to advancing protocols and protocolization worldwide.

YouTube video by The Long Now Foundation

The award-winning bar, cafe, community space, and home to The Long Now Foundation.

Christopher Michel Photography

SFI Fractal Faculty member Stuart Firestein's new book, It Could Be Otherwise, "proposes a subtly radical notion," writes SFI Professor Brandon Ogbunu in this review: "that optimism, as much as confli...

YouTube video by National Gallery of Art

An invisible difference in 10% of humans poses deep mysteries in several fields at once.

Our attempts to insulate ourselves from the outside world are doomed to failure.

The Perseids will peak between August 12 and 13. Here’s what time—and where—you can get the best view, and why 2026 will be an exceptional year.

Layer Player maps Stewart Brand’s pace layers framework onto a Jenga-style stack. Move the fast blocks up top and nothing happens. Touch Nature at the base, and everything comes tumbling down.

A small organ in eastern Germany is the headliner of the world’s slowest concert. It has been playing the same piece of music by composer John Cage at a glacial pace for nearly 25 years.

A team of international scholars versed in culinary history, food chemistry and cuneiform studies has been recreating dishes from the world’s oldest-known recipes.

Christopher Daniel, FRSA reflects on the annual chalking of the Uffington White Horse, a 3,000-year-old land artwork whose survival depends on repeated communal care. Joining volunteers from Long Now ...

YouTube video by The Long Now Foundation

Most ancient architectural traditions have withered, but one is enjoying a golden age: Hindu temple architecture.

Commissioned by the UBS Art Collection, this film was shot in Katie Paterson’s studio in Scotland and explores the role of imagination at the heart of her practice. Katie reflects on how artworks ofte...

The most prized workers will be those who can decode a sea of outputs, spot the meaningful signal and translate it into action that others understand and trust.

Identity in the Age of Neural Media

Learn about the Artist-in-Residence Program.

An icon of Silicon Valley’s counterculture, Stewart Brand is confronting his final years in a home that embodies the self-sufficient, DIY ethos of his famous Whole Earth Catalog.

San Francisco did not invent the cocktail, but we have spent roughly 175 years acting like we did. If a drink made this list, somebody who actually sat on the stool swears by it.

YouTube video by The Long Now Foundation

Launched by Stewart Brand in 02003, Long Now Talks has invited more than 400 leading thinkers to share their civilization-scale ideas with a live audience and millions around the globe tuning in to ou...

YouTube video by The Long Now Foundation

From ancient empires to the industrialized nation-states of our globally-interconnected world, complexity theory offers a fresh perspective on the past and possible futures of human societies.

The radical optimist on starting Wired, stories from the early internet, originating 1,000 True Fans, and why the only way to steer technology is to use it

YouTube video by The Long Now Foundation