May 9, 2006 8:36 AM

The Long Time Tail

(((This looks interesting. I've indeed noticed that Web "news"

aggregators like Digg and Reddit aren't all that interested in topical news. They tend to digg up the same old friend-of-a-friend Internet water-cooler chestnuts: nifty hacks, scandals, cool astronomy pictures, urban folklore... The Internet isn't a news engine, it's a culture engine... and here we have a formulation, "long

tail of time," which suggests that the Internet, as it ages, is generating some cultural continuity.)))

(((I'm not sure how one maintains an Internet "long tail of time"

when the servers wear out and crash, and there is no

permanent archival method of referring to an electronic document...

but jokes, rumors and folktales don't have archives either,

they just float from hand to hand, sometimes for centuries

or maybe even millennia.)))

The Long Now Foundation - http://www.longnow.org

This Friday Chris Anderson (WIRED's editor) and Will Hearst (from Kleiner Perkins) take the "long tail" revolution into a new dimension— time.† They have good news for long-term thinking: the tyranny of the new is over.

"How endless choice is creating unlimited demand" is the description line on Anderson's forthcoming book (July), THE LONG TAIL.† Thanks to plummeting costs of inventory and distribution on the Internet, best-sellers of anything (products, services, ideas) sell better than ever, but so does everything else, and that changes the world.† Tiny-sellers to tiny niches now have aggregate power greater than the best-sellers that used to rule.

But what about old stuff?† Google is a time machine, says Anderson.† Old stuff, instead of vanishing the way it used to, now accumulates more links over time and thus more "authority."† Search engines value relevance over freshness.† The new is always provisional.† The consequential old is perpetually on tap, its consequence always renegotiable.† Internet time, long considered pathologically rapid, apparently contains its own cure.

Note the different venue this month.† Instead of Fort Mason, the talk will be at The Palace of Fine Arts Theater:

"The Long Time Tail," Chris Anderson with Will Hearst, Palace of Fine Arts Theater (by the Exploratorium), San Francisco, 7pm, Friday, May 12.† The lecture starts promptly at 7:30pm.† Admission is free ($10 donation welcome as ever, not required).

This is one of a monthly series of Seminars About Long-term Thinking organized by The Long Now Foundation, usually on second Fridays, usually at Fort Mason (but not this time).† If you would like to be notified by email of forthcoming talks, please contact Simone Davalos— [email protected], 415-561-6582.

You are welcome to forward this note to anyone you think might be interested.

††††††† ††††††† ††††††† ††††††† ††††††† –Stewart Brand

–

Stewart Brand – [email protected] -

The Long Now Foundation - http://www.longnow.org

Seminars: http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/calendar.php

Seminar downloads:† http://www.longnow.org/shop/free-downloads/seminars/