The Long Now Foundation (who I’ve got to know and enjoy working with over the past five years) have a new Membership Program. Becoming a Long Now member helps to fund their various projects (like the Clock) and provides access to high quality online video of their San Francisco Seminars.

They also send you a really cool stainless steel membership card engraved with your charter member number. I’m number 63.

I really enjoyed Monday night’s chat between Steven and Brian. They started off talking about The Ghost Map but the conversation spread its tentacles to include Second Life, neighbourhoods, modern renaissance and slums. Great stuff and Brian got a good chance to talk about Long Now ideas as well.

A podcast is coming soon if you missed it or couldn’t get a ticket — the event sold out completely which isn’t bad for a Monday night.

Some links to follow up:

Matt Jones (he of EnoQuest) has posted his raw notes,

My friend Joe Lee was photographer for the evening and got some great shots (including the one above)

Sebastian Mary asked the best questions on the night and has some thoughts here.

And Steven admits that he and Brian were attempting mind control on the audience.

I’m hoping to do more Long Now London events. If you fancy helping out drop me an email. It’s all unpaid at the moment but I think this event showed the interest is definitely there on this side of the pond.

In my role as London based friend of the Long Now Foundation, I’ve done a bit of pro-am event organisation.

Here are the details:

The Ghost Map
Steven Johnson in conversation with Brian Eno
18:45, 4 December 2006, The ICA, the Mall, London SW1

In 1854 a cholera epidemic killed 50,000 people in England and Wales and become a battle between man and microbe unlike any other. At the ICA, Steven Johnson — author of Everything Bad is Good for You — will tell the story of Dr John Snow, the physician who pounded the streets of London, methodically noting the patterns in the outbreak. The conclusion he came to brought him into conflict with the entire medical establishment, but ultimately enabled him to defeat his era’s greatest killer.

In conversation with Brian Eno — musician, artist and co-founder of the Long Now Foundation — Johnson will explore what a cholera outbreak in the nineteenth century can tell us about solving the long term challenges we face in the twenty-first century.

You can book here — and I strongly recommend that you do. Should be brilliant.