Nicholas Paul Brysiewicz — The Long Now Foundation

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I think about thinking about time. I also help direct The Long Now Foundation. I deliver talks, advise firms, and write papers on long-term thinking. My background is in systems engineering and philosophy—with a special interest in aesthetics, hermeneutics, and phenomenology.

I am the Director of Strategy at The Long Now Foundation, a nonprofit that serves as a center of gravity for long-term projects and long-term thinkers around the world.

We believe that civilization-scale challenges call for civilization-scale thinking. Much of our work aims to counterbalance the culture of short-termism. Our largest project is The Clock of the Long Now: an immense mechanical monument, installed in a mountain, designed to keep accurate time for the next 10,000 years.

The Long Now Foundation was founded in 1996 by musician Brian Eno, writer Stewart Brand, inventor Danny Hillis, journalist Kevin Kelly, and futurist Peter Schwartz.

Our foundation has over 11,000 members across more than 65 countries. We operate The Interval, an award-winning cocktail bar in San Francisco. We produce monthly lectures and podcasts. We created a long-term archive of human language (copies of which now reside on a comet—and on the moon). We have our hands in the de-extinction of the woolly mammoth. And there's more. We keep busy.