One par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­tress­ing hall­mark of late moder­ni­ty can be char­ac­ter­ized as a cul­tur­al loss of the future. Where we once delight­ed in imag­in­ing the turns civ­i­liza­tion would take hun­dreds and even thou­sands of years ahead—projecting rad­i­cal designs, inno­v­a­tive solu­tions, great explo­rations, and pecu­liar evo­lu­tion­ary developments—we now find the mode of fore­cast­ing has grown apoc­a­lyp­tic, as cli­mate change and oth­er cat­a­stroph­ic, man-made glob­al phe­nom­e­na make it dif­fi­cult to avoid some very dire con­clu­sions about humanity’s impend­ing fate. We can add to this assess­ment the loss of what we may call the “long view” in our day-to-day lives.

As the Long Now Foun­da­tion co-founder Stew­art Brand describes it, “civ­i­liza­tion is revving itself into a patho­log­i­cal­ly short atten­tion span,” dri­ven by “the accel­er­a­tion of tech­nol­o­gy, the short-hori­zon per­spec­tive of mar­ket-dri­ven eco­nom­ics, the next-elec­tion per­spec­tive of democ­ra­cies, or the dis­trac­tions of per­son­al mul­ti-task­ing.”

Such is the tex­ture of mod­ern exis­tence, and though we may run our hands over it dai­ly, remark­ing on how tight­ly woven the fab­ric is, we seem to have few-to-no mech­a­nisms for unweaving—or even loosening—the threads. Enter the Long Now Foun­da­tion and its pro­pos­al of “both a mech­a­nism and a myth” as a means encour­ag­ing “the long view and the tak­ing of long-term respon­si­bil­i­ty.”

Image cour­tesy of Because We Can

Inspired by com­put­er sci­en­tist Daniel Hill’s idea for a Stone­henge-sized clock that “ticks once a year, bongs once a cen­tu­ry, and the cuck­oo comes out every mil­len­ni­um,” the foun­da­tion pro­pos­es a num­ber of projects and guide­lines for restor­ing long-term think­ing, includ­ing “mind­ing myth­ic depth,” “reward­ing patience,” and “ally­ing with com­pe­ti­tion.” The clock, ini­tial­ly a thought exper­i­ment, is becom­ing a real­i­ty, as you can see in the short video above, with a mas­sive, “mon­u­ment scale” ver­sion under con­struc­tion in West Texas and scale pro­to­types in Lon­don and the Long Now Foundation’s San Fran­cis­co head­quar­ters. Large­ly a sym­bol­ic ges­ture, the “10,000 year clock,” as it’s called, has been joined with anoth­er, emi­nent­ly prac­ti­cal under­tak­ing rem­i­nis­cent of Isaac Asimov’s Ency­clo­pe­dia Galac­ti­ca—a “library of the deep future.”

One wing of this library, the Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion, aims to com­pile a col­lec­tion of 3,500 books in the Foun­da­tion’s phys­i­cal space—books deemed most like­ly to “sus­tain or rebuild civ­i­liza­tion.” To begin the project, var­i­ous future-mind­ed con­trib­u­tors have been asked to make their own lists of books to add. The first list comes from musician/composer/producer/musical futur­ist and found­ing board mem­ber Bri­an Eno, who named the foun­da­tion. Oth­er notable con­trib­u­tors include Long Now Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent Stew­art Brand and board mem­ber and co-founder of Wired mag­a­zine Kevin Kel­ly. Below, see the first ten titles from each of these futurist’s lists, and fur­ther down, links to the full list of con­trib­u­tors’ selec­tions so far. As you scan the titles below, and browse through each contributor’s list, con­sid­er why and how each of these books would help human­i­ty rebuild civ­i­liza­tion, and sug­gest books of your own in the com­ments.

10 Titles from Bri­an Eno’s Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion list

• See­ing Like a State by James C Scott
• The Mind in the Cave: Con­scious­ness and the Ori­gins of Art by David Lewis-Williams
• Crowds and Pow­er by Elias Canet­ti
• The Wheels of Com­merce by Fer­nand Braudel
• Keep­ing Togeth­er in Time by William McNeill
• Danc­ing in the Streets by Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich
• Roll Jor­dan Roll by Eugene Gen­ovese
• A Pat­tern Lan­guage by Christo­pher Alexan­der et al
• The Face of Bat­tle by John Kee­gan
• A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects by  Neil Mac­Gre­gor

10 Titles from Stew­art Brand’s Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion list

• Dirt: The Ero­sion of Civ­i­liza­tions by David R. Mont­gomery
• Med­i­ta­tions by Mar­cus Aure­lius
• The Odyssey by Homer trans­lat­ed by Robert Fagles
• The Ili­ad by Homer trans­lat­ed by Robert Fagles
• The Mem­o­ry of the World: The Trea­sures That Record Our His­to­ry from 1700 BC to the Present Dayby UNESCO
• The His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objectsby Neil Mac­Gre­gor
• The Land­mark Herodotus: The His­to­riesedit­ed by Robert B. Strassler
• The Land­mark Thucy­dides: A Com­pre­hen­sive Guide to the Pelo­pon­nesian Waredit­ed by Robert B. Strassler
• The Com­plete Greek Tragedies, Vol­umes 1–4 edit­ed by David Grene and Rich­mond Lat­ti­more
• The Prince by Machi­avel­li, trans­lat­ed by George Bull, pub­lished by Folio Soci­ety

10 Titles from Kevin Kelly’s Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion list

• Prac­ti­cal Bam­boos: The 50 Best Plants for Screens, Con­tain­ers and More by Paul Whit­tak­er
• Cave­man Chem­istry: 28 Projects, from the Cre­ation of Fire to the Pro­duc­tion of Plas­tics by Kevin M. Dunn
• The Sound­scape by R. Mur­ray Schafer
• The Back­yard Black­smith by Lore­lai Sims
• A Muse­um of Ear­ly Amer­i­can Tools by Eric Sloane
• Civ­i­liza­tions: Ten Thou­sand Years of Ancient His­to­ry by Jane McIn­tosh and Clint Twist
• Storey’s Guide to Rais­ing Rab­bits by Bob Ben­net
• Tend­ing the Wild: Native Amer­i­can Knowl­edge and the Man­age­ment of California’s Nat­ur­al Resources by M. Kat Ander­son
• Mir­ror Worlds: Or: The Day Soft­ware Puts the Uni­verse in a Shoe­box… How It Will Hap­pen and What It Will Mean by David Gel­ern­ter

Once again, these are only excerpts from longer lists by these three futur­is­tic thinkers. For their com­plete selec­tions, click on their lists below, as well as those from such cul­tur­al fig­ures as sci-fi writer Neal Stephen­son and Brain Pick­ings’ edi­tor Maria Popo­va. And please let us know: Which books would you include in the “Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion” library project, and why? You can also add your own sug­ges­tions for the grow­ing library at the Long Now Foun­da­tion’s web­site.

• Bri­an Eno – A list of books on Long-term think­ing – Bri­an Eno’s list
• Stew­art Brand – Books select­ed from his per­son­al libraries – Stewart’s list
• Neal Stephen­son – A selec­tion of use­ful his­to­ry books – Neal’s list
• Vio­let Blue – Books on human sex­u­al­i­ty – Violet’s list
• Kevin Kel­ly – A huge list of appro­pri­ate tech­nol­o­gy and oth­er books from his library – Kevin’s list
• Megan and Rick Prelinger - Selec­tions made dur­ing a walk through of the Prelinger Library – Megan and Rick’s list
• Bruce Ster­ling – Sci­ence Fic­tion- Bruce’s list
• David Brin – Sci­ence Fic­tion- David’s list
• Daniel Suarez – Sci­ence Fic­tion- Daniel’s list
• Maria Popo­va – “33 Books on How to Live” – Maria’s list
• Mark Pauline – Fic­tion, His­to­ry, Mechan­ics ref­er­ence – Mark’s list

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Books Should Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Read?: Tell Us Your Picks; We’ll Tell You Ours

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness