Stewart Brand's Blog, page 9

Quote of the Day: David Graeber

In Real Time

Horologist Brittany Nicole Cox giving a talk at The Interval at Long Now on horological heritage (02019). Photo by Anthony Thornton.

How do you measure a year? As straightforward as this seems, it is a truly personal question to each of us. What comes to mind? Life, weather or seismic events, loss or gains, political enterprises, a global pandemic? Or terms such as calendars, months, or dates? As a horologist, someone who studies time, I’ve realized there is no concrete way to answer that question. Yet, my job lies in the calculation, measurement, and the sure prediction of time passing in hours, minutes, and seconds. One might say I measure time through numbers, but often it is measured through the inevitable deterioration of the mechanisms I study that are responsible for calculating the passing of time. If anything, I have found that time is not measurable, but perceptible. It is the observation of change and loss that accounts for the passing of time.

Brittany Nicole Cox at her workbench. Photograph by Ben Lindbloom .

In my work I watch the brass and steel components of clock and watch mechanisms wear and break down, an indicator of how hard time has been on them. The tarnish of brass, the result of age and environmental factors. These mechanisms are continually renewed with the intention of the timepiece maintaining both its tangible and intangible qualities: its ability to calculate and record the passing of time, as well as fulfill its function as an artifact created by someone long ago with their own artistic vision and intentions for the observer. As time went on, these mechanisms were made with more wear resistant materials, always with the hope that they could outlast degradation, despite time. Perhaps one of the most successful at this was the 18th century clockmaker John Harrison, the man responsible for inventing the first marine chronometer. Some of his time pieces required no lubrication, as he invented rolling bearings for the application and relied on the synthesis between materials to maintain the time keeping qualities of the mechanism.¹ The clocks of John Harrison can still be seen keeping time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London.

John Harrison’s H4, displayed at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Photograph by Mike Peel ( CC BY-SA 4.0 ).

Keeping time is the work carried on by many before me and is one of the only things we still have in common with pre-Homo sapiens. We have measured time by seasons, famine, light, and darkness, our almanacs a result of such tidings.² These tomes published yearly include such things as tide tables, dates of eclipses and the movements of celestial bodies, and religious festivities. They recommend planting times for crops, give weather forecasts, and record the rising and setting of the sun and moon.³ Yet, none of these things truly indicate the inevitable passing of time. Only one thing changes on a molecular level from second to second. From the moment before and after a baby is born, or the instant when your loved one is still taking in breath to the moment when they are gone — the moment when you are present tense to the moment when you are past. A loss of heat is the only thing that indicates the passing of time.⁴ The more I have studied time, the more ethereal it becomes. Manifesting as water, in its different forms. Much like a snowflake melts, the longer you hold it or try to study it.⁵ Much like a snowflake, each person’s experience of time is different. It cannot be regulated. Time is a personal manifestation of our perception of the space we occupy, truly unique to each of us. It is a strange fact that our heads age faster than our feet. A shorter person is younger than you if you were born at the same instant in time.⁶ Even if time could be measured by some concrete means, our experience of time changes throughout our lives due to physical changes that occur in our brain.⁷ We cannot hold time, possess it, buy it, earn it, or commodify it. It may be the one thing we cannot commodify. Our experience of time changes, one day based on what we have gained and another through what we have lost, or more concisely put, what has changed.

Al-Jaziri’s candle clock (01305). Source: Freer Gallery of Art .

Perhaps one of the oldest methods of telling time through a loss or change principle are candle clocks. The earliest ones were often long thin candles with marked intervals to indicate the passing of hours as the candle burned down.⁸ Later variations included dials and even automata.⁹ The chemistry of a candle simply explained is as follows: you light a candle, the heat from the flame melts the wax, which becomes liquid. This liquid is then drawn up into the wick via capillary action. The heat from the flame vaporizes the liquid wax turning it to gas, which is then drawn into the flame creating heat and light. Enough heat is created to continue this cycle until the wax is exhausted.¹⁰

Chinese incense clock. Source: Science Museum Group (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Incense clocks work in a similar fashion and at times were just as elaborate with bells and gongs, pulleys, and dials. The simplest form was that of an incense stick calibrated to burn at a known rate of combustion. Hours, minutes, and days were passed in witness of the incense stick.¹¹ Yet these forms of telling time through loss are based on confined, predictable, known systems. Our time is not. Our bodies are not like candles or incense sticks and yet we deteriorate with time, changed by factors such as our environment, toxins, or disease that can accelerate the deterioration of our bodies. Change is the body’s way of knowing time.

This may not leave one feeling very grounded in their experience of time, yet our individual perception is all that we have. Life by nature is fleeting. It does not outlast time. Our life is finite and time continues. It is one of the great condolences it can offer. When loss is too great to bear, remember the age-old adage, “everything passes with time.” There is wisdom with this idea carried across cultures. In the Cheyenne Native American tribe, there was a saying told to those ailing, going into battle, or suffering the losses that life brings,

My friends,

Only the stones

Stay on Earth forever

Use your best ability¹²

Though stones change, they do stay. They lose their original primeval form, eventually becoming something only recognizable through magnification. Their erosion is an indicator of time, much like seasons. The degradation of all materials, organic and inorganic, is irreversible and inevitable. To calculate the passing of time through the lens of water eroding stone is a manifestation of nature’s experience of time. Time is based here on the flow rate of the river. It is season based, environment based, climate based, degradation based and is impacted both negatively and positively through the cumulative actions of human beings.

Alaska River Time engages a network of glacial and spring rivers to regulate a new kind of clock, which speeds up and slows down with the waters. The clock can be used to recalibrate all aspects of life from work schedules to personal relationships. Source: Alaska River Time .

The Alaska River Time project of Jonathon Keats brings about an intentional unification between nature’s experience of time and our perception of its passing, while bringing to light our direct impact on it. We are both forced to bear witness and invited to engage. It is not unlike the time realized in our bodies, but here through known bodies of water.

I’d like to say that River Time can offer a more accurate time keeping system than the finest atomic clock, quartz watch, or mechanical time keeper, as it provides a true reflection of time through real time change. I realize that it is unpredictable and the flow rate of a river depends on many factors that the river is forced to exist within, that it cannot control, but can only experience. Perhaps it is this unpredictability which is its greatest asset.

Notes

[1] Jonathan Betts, John Harrison: inventor of the precision timekeeper.

[2] “The term almanac is of uncertain medieval Arabic origin; in modern Arabic, al-manākh is the word for climate,” From the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

[3] Encyclopaedia Britannica.

[4] Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time.

[5] Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time.

[6] Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time.

[7] David Eagleman, Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain.

[8] H.H. Cunynghame, Time and Clocks: A Description of Ancient and Modern Methods of Measuring Time.

[9] Alfred Chapuis, Le Monde des Automates.

[10] Encyclopaedia Britannica.

[11] N.H.N Mody, Japanese Clocks.

[12] Paul Goble, The Boy and His Mud Horses: and Other Stories from the Tipi.

Bibliography

Alfred Chapuis and Eduouard Gelis, Le Monde des Automates: Etude Historique et Technique (Paris: 1928), Pages 51–68.

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Almanac.” Encyclopedia Britannica, January 25, 2018. https://www.britannica.com/topic/almanac.

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Candle.” Encyclopedia Britannica, July 20, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/technology/candle.

Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time (New York: Riverhead Books, 2018), Pages 3, 10, 25.

David Eagleman, Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain (New York: Pantheon, 2020).

H.H. Cunynghame, Time and Clocks: A Description of Ancient and Modern Methods of Measuring Time (Detroit: Single Tree Press, 1970), Page 46.

Jonathan Betts, John Harrison: inventor of the precision timekeeper. Endeavour Volume 17, Issue 4, 1993, Pages 160–167.

N.H.N Mody, Japanese Clocks (Japan: Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc., 1977), Plate 114.

Paul Goble, The Boy and His Mud Horses: and Other Stories from the Tipi (China, World Wisdom, Inc., 2010).

Recommended ReadingDesert Solitaire by Edward AbbeyThe Order of Time by Carlo RovelliThe Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova BaileyLearn MoreWatch Brittany Cox’s 02019 Interval talk, “Horological Heritage.”Watch Jonathon Keats’s 02015 Interval talk, “Envisioning Deep Time.”Pre-order Jonathon Keats’s forthcoming book, Thought Experiments: The Art of Jonathon Keats.

This essay was commissioned by the Anchorage Museum and was originally published on the Alaska River Time website .

Long Now Member Ignite Talks 02020

With thousands of members from all around the world, from artists and writers to engineers and farmers, the Long Now community has a wide range of perspectives, stories, and experience to offer.

On October 20, 02020, we heard 12 of them in a curated set of short Ignite talks given by Long Now Members. What’s an Ignite talk? It’s a story format created by Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis that’s exactly 5 minutes long, told by a speaker who’s working with 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds (ready or not).

These 12 Ignite talks ranged from geeky, fanciful, poignant, educational, with some fresh angles on long-term thinking. We’re pleased to share them with you below.

Collaborating with InsectsCatherine Chalmers

Long Now Member Catherine Chalmers guides us through her multimedia “American Cockroach Project”—a 10-year investigation into humanity’s adversarial relationship with nature.

Activism as Futurism: Imagining Better WorldsAllison Cooper

Long Now Member Allison Cooper encourages us to widen our windows on what is possible, plausible, probable, and preferable.

Change Agents (and How to Become One)Danese Cooper

Long Now Member Danese Cooper shares a personal journey — of being changed by the world, and changing the world.

Instant stone (just add water!)Jason Crawford

Long Now Member Jason Crawford shares the story of concrete, a sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic.

Plastic Mathematics in the ClockStewart Dickson

Long Now Member Stewart Dickson recounts the Equation of Time’s journey from mathematical equation, to 3D model, to machined-metal cam for the Clock of the Long Now.

Deep Fakes & The Archaic RevivalMichael Garfield

Long Now Member Michael Garfield tells a story about the end of reality. Not the end of the world, but the end of the idea of one consensus world.

The Great Dead EndQuentin Hardy

Long Now Member Quentin Hardy uses the historical example of Sienna, Italy to suggest that our present plague-year will have downstream cultural effects for generations.

The Future of StorytellingAsmara Marek

Long Now Member Asmara Marek points at paths forward for the future of storytelling.

Our future drugs will come from the oceans; Can we save them in time?Louis Metzger

Long Now Member Louis Metzger explains how our individual and collective well-being is intimately dependent on the preservation of ocean biodiversity.

Leways: The Story of a Chinatown Pool HallMarc Pomerleau

Long Now Member Marc Pomerleau gives us a glimpse of a Chinatown past, and a vision of its vitality rediscovered in a Chinatown future.

Art and TimeMadeline Sunley

Long Now Member Madeline Sunley shares her ideas & process for making oil paintings of marking systems for communication with the far future.

A Longer NowScott Thrift

Long Now Member Scott Thrift creates analog tools that tune our awareness to the perennial cycles of the day, the moon, and the year, so we can collectively rediscover the original nature of time–and a longer now.

Podcast: The Transformation | Peter Leyden

The Long Now Foundation · Peter Leyden – The Transformation: A Future History of the World from 02020 to 02050

A compelling case can be made that we are in the early stages of another tech and economic boom in the next 30 years that will help solve our era’s biggest challenges like climate change, and lead to a societal transformation that will be understood as civilizational change by the year 02100.

Peter Leyden has built the case for this extremely positive yet plausible scenario of the period from 02020 to 02050 as a sequel to the Wired cover story and book he co-authored with Long Now cofounder Peter Schwartz 25 years ago called The Long Boom: The Future History of the World 1980 to 2020.

His latest project, The Transformation, is an optimistic analysis on what lies ahead, based on deep interviews with 25 world-class experts looking at new technologies and long-term trends that are largely positive, and could come together in surprisingly synergistic ways.

Listen on Apple Podcasts.

Listen on Spotify.

Evan “Skytree” Snyder on Atomic Priests and Crystal Synthesizers

Evan “Skytree” Snyder in his studio. Source:  Facebook .

Evan “Skytree” Snyder straddles two worlds: by day, he is a robotics engineer. By night, he produces electronic music that drops listeners into lush atmospheres evocative of both the ancient world and distant future.

We had a chance to speak with Snyder about his 02020 album Infraplanetary and his recent experiments with piezoelectric musical synthesis. Both projects ratchet up themes of deep time, inviting listeners to meditate on singing rocks and post-historic correspondences.

Our discussion has been edited for clarity and length.

Let’s talk about the lyrics to  “Atomic Priest”  off Infraplanetary.

An excerpt:

“This is for the humans living ten thousand years from now
With radioactive capsules, thousands of feet underground
Grabbin’ the mic to warn you of these hazardous sites
For those who lack in the sight in the black of the night
The least good that we could do is form an Atomic Priesthood
To keep the future species from going where no one should
We’ve buried the mistakes of past nuclear waste
Hidden underground for future races to face
It’s our task to leave signs for civilization to trace
But who’s to say what language these generations will embrace?
Basic symbols up for vast interpretation
Disasters resulting from grave mistranslation
This is not a place of honor and glory
This is a deep geological nuclear repository
Reaching through millennia to give some education
And preserve the evolution of beings and vegetation.”

These are hip-hop artist  Jackson Whalan ’s words, but you prompted him to write a fairly specific piece about communicating to the distant future. What motivated you to make this, and how does it fit into the way you consider and communicate deep time concerns in the rest of your work?

Skytree: I really appreciate the opportunity to discuss this with you. “Atomic Priest” is definitely inspired by my lifelong fascination with deep time — specifically its effect on design principles, engineering challenges, and bridging cultures. I’m intrigued by things that endure, how they endure, and why. The simple practice of considering the long-term is uniquely inspiring, and compared to the relative chaos of the present I find some refuge and meditative calm when reflecting on the decamillennial scale.

The long view also shows up in my process as a music producer. Building compositions is a months-long solo endeavor within my audio workstation. It’s an obsessive, detailed, and laborious process, and my reflecting on deeper timescales while composing is reflected in the product. I’m mindful that the end result feels timeless or out of sync with everyday chronology.

Collaboration makes the work less lonely. The lyrics to “Atomic Priest” were indeed written by Jackson. When I sent him the instrumental to record over I already had a title and theme, and included an article describing the unique challenges of the EPA’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) — an attempt to contain nuclear materials that remain lethal for over 300,000 years. When I first read the article in 02006 I was captivated by the project’s concept sketches of how one might warn unknown future civilizations about nuclear contamination. I then researched the EPA’s Human Interference Task Force and the work of linguist Thomas Sebok, which I also provided to Jackson for reference. I was thrilled with the result. Combining something as contemporary and human as hip-hop with a subject so immense in scale feels very satisfying to me.

Skytree’s song, “Atomic Priest,” was inspired in part by the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Source:  Center for Land Use Interpretation .

You’re touching on something that goes deeper than the future-chic aesthetic of many other electronic artists.

Futurism has always been an inspiration, but on this album I tried to go a bit deeper with it than just sounds or spaces. I often stepped back and reflected on what it might sound like to someone in the deep future, in the unlikely chance they’d find it. What sort of “message in a bottle” might surprise them, excite them, deviate from what they’d expect to find, or feel like a knowing hand-shake from the past?

This potential for a two-way dialogue between entities separated by eons is one of most tantalizing potentials of thinking in deep time scales. The Voyager craft are of course excellent literal vehicles for this potential — designed in the hopes to one day be found, perhaps light years from our star system and far, far in the future, by intelligences we may never meet or learn of but who realize we intended them to find this message. That is perhaps about as close to a real time machine as we may ever get. I’d like to think this album is the best result I’ve achieved to that end.

A still from Skytree’s music video for “Out There.” Source:  Instagram / Skytreemusic .

I want to talk with you more about your current project,  linking up piezoelectric sensors to crystals to send CV signals to modular synthesizers . As someone who actually ate Moon dust as a kid, can you please wax philosophical about making music from stones, and what it is about this that stimulates your artistic or scientific imagination?

My grandfather was the chief of security at NASA during Apollo, and served there for 25 years. One of his most recognizable accomplishments was that he was personally responsible for safely transporting Moon specimens for public viewing and analysis from the NASA archives to the Smithsonian, where many of them are still on display today. He accompanied them on the last leg of their journey to the public’s eye. As a kid, I remember visiting the Smithsonian with my family and marveling at how he was a small but notable part of that incredible accomplishment.

Shortly thereafter, I took that a step too far and snuck a small taste of his personal sample of Moon dust while he was mowing his lawn. I was 8 years old. I remember carefully observing how long it took him to mow the lawn, when it obstructed his view into his house, where he kept his display case keys in his home office, and noting where the small step stool was that I needed to reach the top shelf. It wasn’t so much out of mischief, though outfoxing NASA’s former chief of security, as a child, on the very artifacts he was dutied to protect…feels pretty funny now. Rather, it was more out of a genuine need to try it. Something in me just had to see if I could eat part of the Moon. I did. It tasted chalky, powdery — about what you’d expect. If he were still alive today I wouldn’t dare share this story. He was a hardass and not someone to cross. (Rest in peace, Grandpa.)

So, my love of rocks goes pretty deep. For years, my artist bio has read, “sounds generated by minerals, plants, animals and artifacts.” This used to be tongue-in-cheek, avoiding genres, but I am now quite literally making sounds generated by minerals and plants, plus my already extensive use of animals and artifacts.

This series of experiments scratches a very particular itch. My favorite areas of any museum have always been geology and mineralogy. I remember staring into displays filled with crystals for so long my parents would have to pull me away — especially if they were interactive, illustrating principles like stratification, fossilization, or piezoelectricity. Ever since learning about the use of piezoelectric resonators and components in everyday electronics like radios and computers, I couldn’t help but wonder…could this same effect be demonstrated on a raw quartz point? It turns out it’s not even that difficult.

Just weeks ago, I found a successful method for turning raw quartz pieces in my collection into surprisingly effective piezoelectric pickups. Though I’d used standard factory-made piezos for years, making vibrations onto the surface of a crystal and hearing them come ringing through my headphones was an absolutely magical moment. All that’s needed is some copper tape, copper wire, the right leads, some amplification and signal processing to remove noise. Two electrodes are taped on opposite faces of the crystal point — one out of three sets of faces tends to work best and provides the greatest voltage output. Some crystals work better than others.

Skytree uses a transducer to vibrate a crystal and records the output via piezoelectric signal. Source:  Instagram / Skytreemusic .

At first I went for the tried-and-true approach of simply whacking on these specimens with a mallet, but I’ve gotten more refined with it. Using a function generator (output from a fancy oscilloscope) and a transducer (effectively a speaker without the cone), I’ve been able to impart specific frequencies onto quartz specimens, find resonant points, and record the resulting audio. Moreover, I’ve been able to use this piezoelectric signal as control voltage for my modular synth. I can’t underscore enough how much excitement and motivation this brings me and how happy I am to share this. There’s something incredible about using relatively unaltered geological specimens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years old, in a modular synthesizer in 02021. It feels like a very raw and timeless dialogue between my creative self and immense forces of nature.

Still from a video of Skytree explaining his modular “geosonification” rig. Source: Instagram / Skytreemusic.

I’m already imagining the crystal keyboard in the dash of  Carl Sagan’s Ship of the Imagination , only it’s a Moog.

I’ve also been experimenting with using conductive specimens like meteorite and native copper as crude theremin antennae, to send control voltage to synth modules. This is far easier to set up than the piezoelectric experiments, but nonetheless highlights important and useful physical principles of these materials. My next experiments will involve pyrite, which shifts from an insulator to semiconductor to conductor depending on the strength of the magnetic field it’s exposed to. An electromagnet is sitting on my desk and ready to aid my continued explorations of literal rock music. For the time being, I’m calling this process “geosonification” as a nod to using plants in synthesis under the guise of “biosonification.”

It gives me a way to integrate my loves of music and science and make mutually reinforcing discoveries. With music, I often discover more about myself. With science experiments, I discover more about the world. Combining the two, I get both. It keeps me playing and interested. I’m not an exceptionally talented instrumentalist, but this gives me a way to tread new ground using some of the oldest tricks on Earth.

Since you mentioned plants, and as far as leaving a record for the future is concerned, we’re having this exchange in the context of  the growing popularity of attaching sensors and MIDI converters to plants , and sonifying data in general. Data sonification seems key in the ongoing work of making multiple spatiotemporal scales easier to grasp and work with. And “letting plants speak” in music seems par for the course right now, as the Wood Wide Web becomes a colloquial idea and we collectively grapple with the ideas of personhood for companies or ecosystems operating on vastly different timescales.

Yeah, to the point of piezoelectrcity and plants, I have a synth module that turns subtle variations in capacitance from a plant, person or other semiconductor into usable control voltages. My dad has been a huge inspiration with all this. He recently retired after 27 years in the National Park Service as midwest region radio manager. Growing up, there were always electronics around; I was exposed to the fundamentals of these technologies pretty early on and first burned my hand on a soldering iron when I was ten.

One of the most fascinating stories my dad ever told me was about an unexplained vast radio deadzone in National Park land. It turned out that a miles-long row of trees had grown into an old line of forgotten barbed wire fence. This grid of metal wire turned the electrolytic trees into a giant capacitor, which significantly disrupted radio propagation in the entire region. That’s a pretty seamless, unintended, and unexpected blend of nature and technology. It’s also a reminder there really is a hidden dimension of energy running through things, and sometimes you find it by accident.

That’s a fine place to end this.

Thanks, Michael and Long Now, for your inspiring work, and thank you to all the long-view thinkers out there that share a sense of wonder, awe, and stillness when gazing into the unknowable future.

Learn More:Listen to Skytree on Bandcamp & SoundCloud (including science-inspired dinosaur sounds).Listen to Skytree on Future Fossils Podcast’s premier episode, debuted at Moogfest 2016.Read our three-part series on Music, Time, and Long-term Thinking.Read our interview with Melodysheep, whose viral half-hour long video takes viewers on a timelapse journey to the end of the universe.

Podcast: Queering the Future | Jason Tester

The Long Now Foundation · Jason Tester – Queering the Future: How LGBTQ Foresight Can Benefit All

Jason Tester asks us to see the powerful potential of “queering the future” – how looking at the future through a lens of difference and openness can reveal unexpected solutions to wicked problems, and new angles on innovation. Might a queer perspective hold some of the keys to our seemingly intractable issues?

Tester brings his research in strategic foresight, speculative design work, and understanding of the activism and resiliency of LGBTQ communities together as he looks toward the future. Can we learn new ways of thinking, and thriving, from the creative approaches and adaptive strategies that have emerged from these historically marginalized groups?

Listen on Apple Podcasts.

Listen on Spotify.

Smithsonian acquires artwork based on Stewart Brand epigram

Alicia Eggert next to her artwork, This Present Moment (02019-20). Via The University of North Texas.

The Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery has acquired a light sculpture based on quote from Long Now co-founder Stewart Brand’s book on long-term thinking, The Clock of the Long Now (01999).

The epigram comes from the book’s final chapter, and has its origins in an exchange between Brand and his friend, the Beat poet Gary Snyder:

While I was completing this book, the poet Gary Snyder sent me an epigram that had come to him:

This present moment

That lives on to become

Long ago.

I felt it was The Clock of the Long Now that responded to him:

This present moment

Used to be

The unimaginable future.

Stewart Brand, The Clock of the Long Now (01999), 163-4.

In 02019, Alicia Eggert, an artist and professor of sculpture at The University of North Texas, created a light sculpture based on Brand’s epigram titled This Present Moment. The artwork cycles through two neon statements: “This present moment used to be the unimaginable future” and “This present moment used to be the future.”

The Present Moment (02019-20).

“My goal is always to say something that feels really meaningful but is always relevant — something that will be true today and 1,000 years from now,” Eggert said in a statement. “These statements from Brand are always true, but they mean different things at different times, and their meanings can vary from person to person.”

This is Eggert’s first acquisition. The artwork will debut at the museum as part of the Renwick Gallery’s 50th anniversary exhibition in 02022.

“Having my work in a museum was unimaginable to me for a long time,” Eggert said. “The idea that it’s going to be cared for and be viewed by people for generations to come is such an incredible thing.”

Nils Gilman Wins 12-Year Long Bet About Women in Sports, But It Was Closer Than The Final Score Suggests

Soccer player Carli Lloyd kicks a field goal during practice with the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens in 02019. Photo credit: Heather Khalifa.

Nils Gilman, VP of Programs at the Berggruen Institute, Deputy Editor of Noema magazine, and a Long Now Speaker, has won a 12-Year Long Bet about Women in Sports. In 02008, Gilman challenged a prediction by Thomas R. Leavens, a Chicago attorney, that by the end of 02020, a professional sports team that was part of either the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, or Major League Soccer would integrate and have a woman as a team member on its regular season roster. 

Leavens presented the following argument in favor of his prediction:

While there may be a rational basis for arranging competitive sporting events by gender when the competition is one-on-one, such as track, skiing, or tennis, that rationale starts to break down with respect to team sports, where gender physical differences may not have the same impact and women may not be viewed as being disadvantaged (or advantaged) by competing against men. Participation by women in all areas of sports has increased, with many entering areas previously occupied only by men. However, to my knowledge, no woman has been selected as a player with a major US professional football, soccer, hockey, basketball, or baseball team. My prediction is based on the belief that by 02020, a woman athlete will emerge as a member of such a team, based not only on her skill but also on the greater available pool of women playing such sports, the incentive of the greater talent compensation available to players on the major sports teams (as opposed to the compensation paid to current women-only sports teams), and the changing overall societal view of the role of gender that will make a team’s decision to add a woman player to a previously all-male team more compelling.

Gilman challenged Leavens’s prediction on the basis of the physical disparities in size, speed, strength and testosterone levels that advantage men in most sports—resulting, by some estimates, in an 8-12% performance gap between the sexes:

In many sports, men and women are able to compete at nearly equal levels. Sports that are primarily about eye-hand coordination, reflexes, and rapid decision making are ripe for gender integration. However, there are many sports for which strength — in terms of explosiveness, endurance, and sheer force — are predominant factors in determining excellence. At the elite, professional level, male athletes in these sports exceed the conceivable strength of all females. This applies to football, soccer, hockey, basketball and baseball. Genetic or chemical modification could conceivably change this, and if such technologies were to become available, they would presumably also be used by male athletes, thus leveling the playing field.

While these leagues made notable progress toward gender integration outside of the field of play, none came close to adding a woman as a team member.¹ Gilman’s $500 in winnings will go to the UC Berkeley History Department, where he completed his Bachelors, Masters, and Doctorate degrees. 

At first glance, Gilman appeared to win this bet handedly. But it was closer than the final score suggests. 

“At the time the bet was made, the categories of ‘men’ and ‘women’ were much more stable than they are now — the bet itself presumes that everyone (in men’s professional sports) will be cis-gendered,” Gilman tells Long Now. “So far, in fact, that has turned out to be true, but at this point I wouldn’t count on that lasting that much longer.” 

There have been significant advances in trans-visibility and trans-rights since 02008. These advances have occurred alongside a societal evolution regarding the fluidity of gender. This is especially evident in Gen Z, the demographic cohort whose members were born in the mid-to-late 01990s. 

According to a 02018 report on gender fluidity, nearly 25% of Gen Zers expect their gender to change throughout their lifetimes. Of those, “45% expect their gender identity to change 2-3 times.”

How would the bet have been resolved if a trans-woman emerged on the roster in the five professional sports leagues?

The bet’s terms made room for this possibility, stating that “a woman, or a person who identifies as a woman” would satisfy the bet. 

Gilman admits that when outlining the bet’s terms, he did not have transgender people in mind, but athletes along the lines of Dennis Rodman, the eccentric basketball player from the 01990s who once wore a wedding dress to promote his autobiography. Regardless, had a trans-woman made the roster of a team, Leavens would have won the bet. 

“I still think trans-phobia will prevent that from happening for quite some time, but I don’t know how long of a bet I’d want to make that for now — certainly not past the end of this decade,” Gilman says. “But at the time I made the original bet, I was so naively cis-centric that I didn’t even contemplate this possibility.”

Long Now’s Long Bets project was founded on the premise that we can improve our long-term thinking by holding ourselves accountable for the predictions we make about the future. By revisiting our forecasts as time goes by, we reveal the subtle mechanics of society’s evolution, and teach ourselves something about what kinds of visions might turn into reality. 

“One of the challenges of thinking long is that one focuses inevitably on a set of things that one thinks is going to change,” Gilman says. “And one makes implicit assumptions about things that aren’t going to change.”

Sometimes, what predictors miss is as illuminating as what they anticipate.

Notes

[1]  The NFL came closest, but that isn’t saying much. In 02013, Lauren Silberman became the first woman to participate in an NFL try out at a regional combine. In 02019, Women’s World Cup hero Carli Lloyd was approached by several NFL teams after footage of her kicking field goals went viral, but nothing came of it. 

Learn More

Should women compete against men in sports? The Perspective provides a round-up of the arguments in favor and against. The participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports generates much controversy and debate. Read this New York Times article on how the debate pits “two almost irreconcilable positions” against one another: inclusion and competitive fairness. Joanna Harper, a transgender woman, distance runner, and researcher on the International Olympic Committee, proposes a middle way through the transgender athletes in sports debate in this op-ed for The Guardian. Think Gilman’s on the money when he says that a woman could break through these professional sports by the end of this decade? Make your prediction on Long Bets.We had a number of Long Bets and Predictions made about the year 02020. Read our analysis here.

Imagining 02030

Bases on the moon and colonies on Mars. The eradication of poverty. Catastrophic climate change.

WIRED shares six visions of what the world of 02030 could look like.

Podcast: The Future of Breathing | James Nestor

The Long Now Foundation · James Nestor – The Future of Breathing

Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, journalist James Nestor questions the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function, breathing.

Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary specialists to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe. His inquiry leads to the understanding that breathing is in many ways as important as what we eat, how much we exercise, or whatever genes we’ve inherited.

Listen on Apple Podcasts.

Listen on Spotify.