I have been having a ton of fun over at Long Bets. The purpose of Long Bets is to improve long-term thinking.

Someone makes a prediction. Once the prediction is on the website someone can make a wager that the prediction will not come true. The subject of the prediction or bet must be societally or scientifically important. Predictors and bettors must provide an argument explaining why the subject of their prediction is important and why they think they will be proved right. The wagers are held in an escrow account and are payable to the a charity of the winner’s choice. The list of predictors and bettors is a who’s who of big brains.

For instance, one of my favorite bets is between Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google) and Craig Mundie (CTO of Microsoft).

Craig believes that by 2030, commercial passengers will routinely fly in pilotless planes. Eric decidely disagrees. You can read their arguments here.

Long Bets is a project of the Long Now Foundation which was founded by, among others, Brian Eno (who coined the term).

The Long Now Foundation was established in 1996 and hopes to “provide counterpoint to today’s ‘faster/cheaper’ mind set and promote ’slower/better’ thinking. [They] hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.”

I read a fantastic article by Eno wherein he came up with the idea of the Long Now. I can’t put my finger on it now. Here it is.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 at 6:08 pm and is filed under Culture, Innovation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.