Stephen Heintz & Kim Stanley Robinson | A Logic For The Future | Long Now Talks

Stephen Heintz and Kim Stanley Robinson say we live in an “Age of Turbulence.”

Looking around our geopolitical situation, it’s easy to see what they mean. Faced with the ever-growing threat of climate change, the looming potential breakdown of the post-01945 international order, and the ambiguous prospects of rapid technological changes in fields like AI, biotechnology, and geoengineering, it is clear that we need new answers to new challenges.

Stephen Heintz, a Public policy expert and president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), and Kim Stanley Robinson, one of the most acclaimed science fiction authors writing today, work in very different fields. But each of them in his own way has sketched out a vision of what we must do to face down the intersecting crises of our time: While their methods may differ, they align on their conclusions.

In their Long Now Talk, Heintz and Robinson propose what they refer to as “A Logic For The Future” — a new path for international relations in the face of the chaos of our current age.

This talk was presented March 19, 02025 at the Cowell Theatre in San Francisco. The event livestream is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/DZR06QyD...
Episode notes: https://longnow.org/ideas/a-logic-for...

To read Stephen Heintz’s essay “A Logic for the Future”, visit https://longnow.org/ideas/a-logic-for...

This talk is part of Long Now Talks.

Launched by Stewart Brand in 02003, Long Now Talks has invited more than 400 leading thinkers to share their civilization-scale ideas with a live audience and millions around the globe tuning in to our podcast and videos. Long Now Talks are brought to you by The Long Now Foundation, which has spent the last 25 years igniting cultural imagination around long-term thinking.

By inspiring thought and conversation about how we've been shaped by the last 10,000 years and what might be in store for us over the next 10,000 years, Long Now Talks seek to expand our collective sense of the present moment. Long Now Talks cover futurism and speculative fiction; time, nature, and contemplative practices; the intersection of the humanities and sciences; the evolution of counterculture to cyberculture; cultural imagination, land art and public monuments; and of course, long-term thinking and being a good ancestor.

In our age of compounding crises, The Long Now Foundation is a counterweight — our community of 12,000 strong across 65 countries over our first quarter century. We are a force that imagines new possibilities, thinks critically, and takes action over the long term. We believe that when we all come together, bound by commitment and curiosity, audacious things become possible. Will you join us? https://longnow.org/join