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Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now
A guide to long-term thinking: how to envision the far future of Earth.
We live on a planet careening toward environmental collapse that will be largely brought about by our own actions. And yet we struggle to grasp the scale of the crisis, barely able to imagine the effects of climate change just ten years from now, let alone the multi-millennial timescales of Earth's past and future life span. In this book, Vincent Ialenti offers a guide for envisioning the planet's far future—to become, as he terms it, more skilled deep time reckoners. The challenge, he says, is to learn to inhabit a longer now.
Ialenti takes on two overlapping crises: the Anthropocene, our current moment of human-caused environmental transformation; and the deflation of expertise—today's popular mockery and institutional erosion of expert authority. The second crisis, he argues, is worsening the effects of the first. Hearing out scientific experts who study a wider time span than a Facebook timeline is key to tackling our planet's emergency. Astrophysicists, geologists, historians, evolutionary biologists, climatologists, archaeologists, and others can teach us the art of long-termism.
For a case study in long-term thinking, Ialenti turns to Finland's nuclear waste repository “Safety Case” experts. These scientists forecast far future glaciations, climate changes, earthquakes, and more, over the coming tens of thousands—or even hundreds of thousands or millions—of years. They are not pop culture “futurists” but data-driven, disciplined technical experts, using the power of patterns to construct detailed scenarios and quantitative models of the far future. This is the kind of time literacy we need if we are to survive the Anthropocene.
We live on a planet careening toward environmental collapse that will be largely brought about by our own actions. And yet we struggle to grasp the scale of the crisis, barely able to imagine the effects of climate change just ten years from now, let alone the multi-millennial timescales of Earth's past and future life span. In this book, Vincent Ialenti offers a guide for envisioning the planet's far future—to become, as he terms it, more skilled deep time reckoners. The challenge, he says, is to learn to inhabit a longer now.
Ialenti takes on two overlapping crises: the Anthropocene, our current moment of human-caused environmental transformation; and the deflation of expertise—today's popular mockery and institutional erosion of expert authority. The second crisis, he argues, is worsening the effects of the first. Hearing out scientific experts who study a wider time span than a Facebook timeline is key to tackling our planet's emergency. Astrophysicists, geologists, historians, evolutionary biologists, climatologists, archaeologists, and others can teach us the art of long-termism.
For a case study in long-term thinking, Ialenti turns to Finland's nuclear waste repository “Safety Case” experts. These scientists forecast far future glaciations, climate changes, earthquakes, and more, over the coming tens of thousands—or even hundreds of thousands or millions—of years. They are not pop culture “futurists” but data-driven, disciplined technical experts, using the power of patterns to construct detailed scenarios and quantitative models of the far future. This is the kind of time literacy we need if we are to survive the Anthropocene.
208 pages, Paperback
Published September 22, 2020
16 people are currently reading
519 people want to read
About the author
Vincent Ialenti
1 book7 followersVincent Ialenti is a Social Scientist in the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy. He is also a Research Associate in Cal Poly Humboldt’s Department of Environmental Studies. Vincent holds a PhD from Cornell University and an MSc from the London School of Economics.
Prior to his federal service, Vincent was MacArthur Assistant Research Professor at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. He has held fellowships at University of Southern California, University of British Columbia, and Cornell’s Society for the Humanities.
Vincent has published with The MIT Press, American Ethnologist, Social Studies of Science, Physics Today, Nuclear Technology, Science & Technology Studies, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Nature Geoscience, and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. His writing has been featured by the BBC, Scientific American, NPR, Science, Forbes, Atlas Obscura, Psyche, Public Radio International, and other outlets.
Vincent's research has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, N Square Collaborative, and The Berggruen Institute.
Prior to his federal service, Vincent was MacArthur Assistant Research Professor at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. He has held fellowships at University of Southern California, University of British Columbia, and Cornell’s Society for the Humanities.
Vincent has published with The MIT Press, American Ethnologist, Social Studies of Science, Physics Today, Nuclear Technology, Science & Technology Studies, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Nature Geoscience, and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. His writing has been featured by the BBC, Scientific American, NPR, Science, Forbes, Atlas Obscura, Psyche, Public Radio International, and other outlets.
Vincent's research has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, N Square Collaborative, and The Berggruen Institute.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 19, 2020
Rooted in an ethnographic accounting of Finnish nuclear waste storage planners (the “Safety Case” project), Ialenti has composed a fascinating “how to” book for “thinking long” — a sort of “calisthenics if the mind,” designed to help people think in a rigorous, structured way about the distant future, this creating a cognitive matrix designed to address the twin crises of the Anthropocene, namely short-termism and the “deflation of expertise.”
The specific “reckonings” (eg mental heuristics) that Ialenti recommends in order to cultivated “deep time thinking” include:
* Trying regularly to imagine what our immediate space (landscapes and streetscapes) looked like long ago, or will look like in the far future
* Embracing Levinasian “infinition” — the overflowing of the thought that thinks it
* Cultivating both epistemic pluralism and epistemic humility
* Tracking the gazintas and gazoutas of all systems to anticipate overflows and imbalances
* Practicing multitimescale awareness
* Helicoptering between different levels of analysis
* Not relying on lone geniuses
* Participating in “Perspective Exchanging Parlors” like the Long Now Foundation’s monthly seminars
And he also makes recommendations for new institutional practices including the creation of
* a “Global Deep Time Reckoning Association”
* a “Global Deep Time Reckoning Information Repository”
The specific “reckonings” (eg mental heuristics) that Ialenti recommends in order to cultivated “deep time thinking” include:
* Trying regularly to imagine what our immediate space (landscapes and streetscapes) looked like long ago, or will look like in the far future
* Embracing Levinasian “infinition” — the overflowing of the thought that thinks it
* Cultivating both epistemic pluralism and epistemic humility
* Tracking the gazintas and gazoutas of all systems to anticipate overflows and imbalances
* Practicing multitimescale awareness
* Helicoptering between different levels of analysis
* Not relying on lone geniuses
* Participating in “Perspective Exchanging Parlors” like the Long Now Foundation’s monthly seminars
And he also makes recommendations for new institutional practices including the creation of
* a “Global Deep Time Reckoning Association”
* a “Global Deep Time Reckoning Information Repository”
March 11, 2022
The topic itself surely deserves attention. Humans have been cursed with short-term and near-space bias. Asking oneself something like "How can I be a good ancestor?" ("Kā būt labam sencim?) can help. The deflation of expertise is also real, though, as the book reveals, there are cases when the research apparatus perpetuates itself because it can, not because it adds to useful knowledge.
Sadly, much of the text consisted of bland fantasies and raw ideas about institutional change (as the author admits, "open-ended brainstorming pathways").
But there were also exceptionally good bits. Notably, the chapter about the impact of the loss of "Seppo", an eccentric critical expert (for that one could also read an article by the same author).
Sadly, much of the text consisted of bland fantasies and raw ideas about institutional change (as the author admits, "open-ended brainstorming pathways").
But there were also exceptionally good bits. Notably, the chapter about the impact of the loss of "Seppo", an eccentric critical expert (for that one could also read an article by the same author).
February 12, 2022
Very helpful book to become a better deep time thinker. Many good policy suggestions as well. Quite a thought provoking read!
March 17, 2024
The issues this books discuss (the effects of the Anthropocene and, a phrase I haven't heard before but quite liked, the 'Deflation of Expertise') are very important issues. And any approach to mindsets that can help us as individuals better know how to think about and address these issues is beneficial to share.
However, what I got from this book wasn't what I was expecting. I expected more time walking through exercises to engage in Deep Time Thinking, to understand what it really means. What I got instead was a lot, a LOT of anecdotes about the authors time working alongside Safety Case Experts in Finland and how their organization worked towards safely identifying a place to store nuclear waste. These folks really did deep time thinking, at a highly technical level, with mathematical modelling and other techniques.
I don't feel that this came across. The author over-indexed on describing how the safety case operated, in immense detail, then summarizing from it "Reckonings" that were ways we could think based on what they did.
This was, ultimately, only mildly insightful and blandly written. And dedicating an entire chapter to the impact of one such expert dying, focusing more on anecdotes people told about that person after they did, was overkill. If you've been involved in business for any period of time and had a talented colleague leave an organization for whatever reason, you understand the idea of a 'bus factor'. Yet he presented it in such deep detail it felt like he felt there was a unique insight there that was specific to deep time thinking. I'm not sure I got that insight.
Unfortunately, I walked away from this book knowing more about how Finlands Safety Case Experts work than I did about Deep Time Thinking.
However, what I got from this book wasn't what I was expecting. I expected more time walking through exercises to engage in Deep Time Thinking, to understand what it really means. What I got instead was a lot, a LOT of anecdotes about the authors time working alongside Safety Case Experts in Finland and how their organization worked towards safely identifying a place to store nuclear waste. These folks really did deep time thinking, at a highly technical level, with mathematical modelling and other techniques.
I don't feel that this came across. The author over-indexed on describing how the safety case operated, in immense detail, then summarizing from it "Reckonings" that were ways we could think based on what they did.
This was, ultimately, only mildly insightful and blandly written. And dedicating an entire chapter to the impact of one such expert dying, focusing more on anecdotes people told about that person after they did, was overkill. If you've been involved in business for any period of time and had a talented colleague leave an organization for whatever reason, you understand the idea of a 'bus factor'. Yet he presented it in such deep detail it felt like he felt there was a unique insight there that was specific to deep time thinking. I'm not sure I got that insight.
Unfortunately, I walked away from this book knowing more about how Finlands Safety Case Experts work than I did about Deep Time Thinking.
February 5, 2023
The documentary Into Eternity has stuck with me forever, so when I saw "nuclear waste disposal" I was excited about this. So this rather more theoretical angle of "deep time reckonings" and the ethnographic study of the Safety Cases was not exactly what I was expecting: I'd hoped for more solidly illustrative description of their actual findings and results of the deep time studies, rather than Ialenti's focus on methodologies and structure and input/output systems. Still, there were enough interesting points and perspectives nonetheless to keep me reading to the end, and it is nice, sometimes, to step outside of my usual reading and dive into some completely different anthropological corner for a bit.
February 2, 2025
Read only the intro
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews