The folks at the Long Now Foundation think deep thoughts about humanity’s future—their to-do list includes building a clock that’ll keep time for 10,000 years. But in the meantime they’ve built something more practical: a very nice bar. Located at San Francisco’s Fort Mason, the new lounge, called the Interval, will host events and discussions, and it’ll feature plenty of steampunk treats: custom-designed bottles of spirits stored in overhead racks, a robot that writes specials on a chalkboard, and another that dispenses the botanicals for your gin. But the real attraction will be the library. The Long Now crew calls it the Manual for Civilization—thousands of books recommended by foundation members and more than a dozen celebrity thinkers. So no matter what happens, from climate change to killer asteroids, whoever’s left can rebuild. Or at least have something to read while sipping house-aged whiskey.
STEWART BRAND
Founder: Long Now Foundation, Whole Earth Catalog
Highlights
The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer (trans. Robert Fagles)
The Prince by Machiavelli
The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, et al.
Approach
“I’m particularly interested in the continuity of civilization and how it gets better and more refined. It’s better to keep civilization going than to count on it stopping and starting in an interesting way.”
VIOLET BLUE
Journalist, sex educator
Highlights
Guide to Getting It On by Paul Joannides
X: The Erotic Treasury by Susie Bright
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
Love and Sex With Robots by David Levy
Approach
“I wanted time less books that would help people with a topic that’s been one of the most divisive, political, scary, thrilling, empowering, intimate, shunned, exploited, and smile inducing aspects of being human.”
DANNY HILLIS
Inventor, engineer
Highlights
Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville Principia Mathematica
by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell
The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Richard Feynman
SR-71 Blackbird Pilot’s Flight Manual
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Approach
“I tried to avoid just putting in my favorite books. The question I asked myself is, what books have information in them that took humanity a while to figure out?”
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