Deep Time Reckoning

How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now

Part of One Planet

Foreword by Marcia Bjornerud
Ebook
On sale Sep 22, 2020 | 200 Pages | 978-0-262-35935-1
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.
SERIES FOREWORD vii
FOREWORD BY MARCIA BJORNERUD ix
PREFACE xiii
INTRODUCTION: EMBRACING DEEP TIME LEARNING 1
1 HOW TO RIDE ANALOGIES ACROSS DEEP TIME 45
2 HOW FAR FUTURE WORLDS SPROUT FROM SIMPLE
REPEATING PATTERNS 69
3 HOW TO ZOOM IN AND OUT ON DEEP TIME FROM
DIFFERENT ANGLES 93
4 HOW TO FACE DEEP TIME EXPERTISE'S MORTALITY 119
CONCLUSION: ESCAPING SHALLOW TIME DISCIPLINE 143
A DEEP TIME RECKONING LEXICON 157
NOTES 165
INDEX
Vincent Ialenti is MacArthur Assistant Research Professor in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.

About

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.

Table of Contents

SERIES FOREWORD vii
FOREWORD BY MARCIA BJORNERUD ix
PREFACE xiii
INTRODUCTION: EMBRACING DEEP TIME LEARNING 1
1 HOW TO RIDE ANALOGIES ACROSS DEEP TIME 45
2 HOW FAR FUTURE WORLDS SPROUT FROM SIMPLE
REPEATING PATTERNS 69
3 HOW TO ZOOM IN AND OUT ON DEEP TIME FROM
DIFFERENT ANGLES 93
4 HOW TO FACE DEEP TIME EXPERTISE'S MORTALITY 119
CONCLUSION: ESCAPING SHALLOW TIME DISCIPLINE 143
A DEEP TIME RECKONING LEXICON 157
NOTES 165
INDEX

Author

Vincent Ialenti is MacArthur Assistant Research Professor in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.

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