The book is effectively a series of essays, that together loosely tell the story of the Long Now Foundation’s motivations to encourage and inspire long-term thinking. The chapters touch on such subject as:

• Time
• The rush of technology
• Religion
• Monuments of human ingenuity & persistence.
• Preservation of knowledge.
• Understanding the scope of the future.

Their intent is to build The Clock of the Long Now:

• The clock will run for 10,000 years accurately, with only bronze-age technology for maintenance.
• The clock will tick once a day and dong once a year.
• The clock will be a large facility, grand in scale.
• Such scale and simplicity is meant to awe and give one pause, for the breadth of such a time-scale, past and future.

They also are designing The Library of the Long-Now:

• encourage long-term knowledge curation & scientific studies.
• preserve human knowledge to transcend the possible collapse of current civilization.

One notable chapter, called “Burning Libraries”, describes various movements to destroy artifacts of human knowledge / history.  They describe movements that try to wipe the slate clean.  Generally all of these movements fail within a generation, and society looks back with aghast shame at such events.

Another memorable chapter is on Religion and time, specifically how they interact with optimism / fatalism.  One poignant point was that most religions ( particularly the Abrahamic ones ) reinforce the idea that the world in time is close to its the end.  One quote:

Jews are waiting for the Messiah to come, to end history.
Christians are waiting for him to come again, to end history.
Muslims know that he already came; history's over.

In short, religious often deny the future as a time worth working towards.

On the whole, the essays cover allot of philosophical ground about human nature and potential.  The book definitely isn’t for everyone, but has many nuggets that I’ll come back to again for inspiration.  3.5 of 4 possible stars.

The book is best categorized as a Philosophical Logic work.

The premise of the book is to define what finite and infinite games are, differentiate the two, and then apply those patterns to many aspects of everyday life to surprising consequences.

For example, imagine a suburban neighbourhood where a group of kids gather for baseball games every afternoon during the summer. Anyone can play, and teams are divided so that they are evenly matched. Players are implicitly ranked by their peers from performance over past games.  Poor players are welcomed to play, even if it makes a team perform worse.  The point is to keep playing and keep changing the game.

Next, imagine a little league team from a nearby neighbourhood. They had to try-out, and poor players are screened out. Practice games are required several times a week. Players are ranked against each other according to various stats, and players are encouraged to perfect various skills for the betterment of the teams performance.  The point is to win as many games in the little league series that summer.

Now, imagine what would happen if the two groups were to play together. If the daily neighbourhood game players had the little league team come over, two things would happen: the little league would insist on playing against each other, not mixing the teams, and would adhere to their strict rules, and likely the neighbourhood kids would loose since they don’t play this way. Eventually the neighbourhood kids would get bored and stop playing the little league game.

Finally, image the little league team hosting the neighbourhood kids in a game. As part of the invite they mix members like the neighbourhood kids games do. The little league players would become immediately frustrated because the neighbourhood kids haven’t seriously practiced and each team doesn’t work efficiently together. They would perceive the neighbourhood kids as not playing seriously, perhaps making a parse of the whole enterprise, and would not enjoy the game at all.

Although a contrived scenario, ( kids learn early on which style they enjoy, and that these are two fundamentally different activities, ) this demonstrates the two styles of play and how they compare to each other.

The book also has an almost lyrical component: James chooses words which we’d normally use as synonyms, but in the context of finite and infinite games become antonyms or complementary terms. Notable examples were “powerful” / “strength” and “theatrical” / “dramatic”. I found this amusing and thought provoking, as I tend to obsess on the connotations of words in certain works.

Overall, I didn’t agree with all the points of the book, but it’s premise, it’s style, and ability to inspire make me give it 4 of 4 possible stars.

I came across this flash animation awhile ago, and remembered it when having a discussion with my friend Jen about the lack of Civics education in America’s school system. I think it is straight to the point and easily understandable for any age group.

Some people might see it as politically charged; I see it as simply exploring a concept to its full conclusion.