Milliongenerations:About milliongenerations.org

This site is an open source think tank that invites you to think about how civilization can last on this planet. To explore the conditions required for knowledge to be shared while life is possible on the earth i.e., while the sun provides a suitable environment. To help identify requirements for lasting civilizations. This knowledge would make it easier to find ways to create the right conditions.

This discussion invites everyone interested to think out of the box and look from a different perspective i.e., to look back from an assumption rather than to predict the future or change the present. To look back at the present from a desired future. To leave pressing and important issues such as climate change, resources, inequality, and conflicts for what they are for a while and to focus here exclusively on the constraints placed by the assumption that civilization(s) continue for millions of generations. To develop positive concepts for possible futures and create ideas for sustainability and resilience rather than reducing unsustainability or just hoping everything is going to be all right. For example, let us realize how much we can consume and what materials we can use if there still are millions of generations after us. If this perspective helps some of us to come up with viable visions or inspiring ideas, we may hope for beneficial feedback to current affairs.

Various organizations dedicated to influencing the here and now in one way or another already exist. The focus on this site should firmly remain in the long term, no matter how (or if) we believe it can or should be reached. If you're looking to do something else, you could check out initiatives listed here or actions discussed here.

milliongenerations.org is a mostly informally organized volunteer effort around a formally organized not-for-profit foundation based in The Netherlands: Stichting milliongenerations. The site exists to enable the exploration of the perspective created by the assumption that civilization(s) continue for very long periods on this planet. This need not be static and unchanging.

The question was conceived around the question of maximizing happiness, itself initially feared too diverse for direct approach. Existence and awareness seem prerequisite for happiness and the future would overwhelmingly contribute to happiness if civilization(s) managed to continue. And although milliongenerations.org hopes that civilization(s) will continue and let individuals realize the wonder of being alive, there is no agenda for any particular outcome nor do we have answers we intend to promote.

The plan is to organize a prize to go to the most positively cited contributions. The environment of this site will have to be substantially adapted to achieve that. There currently is no promise of such a prize for contributions now made, and the prize concept may be abandoned altogether if better solutions are found or if it proves infeasible or unnecessary. We hope to accommodate contributions in different languages and it would be welcome if the format turned out to be useful to also help explore other questions. It may take a while before such a model can be implemented.

The Wiki approach may not be ideal for the purpose. We are, however, very grateful to the Wikimedia Foundation for providing the MediaWiki environment. We plan to use it until we have and can implement a concept that is more suitable to a focused discussion. We are especially grateful to Wikipedia for changing the way we share and access information. And for giving us hope that inspiring things can come from this initiative.

If you have ideas on how to arrange any aspect of a model that could work, if you want to support us in any way or help to better define and communicate our questions, please share your thoughts in the community or check out what needs to be done most urgently.

A note on hosting: for the hosting of this site, milliongenerations.org uses the services of NXS Internet BV in the Netherlands. NXS states that it uses only "green electricity" for their data center since mid-2008 and plants oaks in the "Dutch Internet Forest" in Winterswijk/Netherlands, together with Cleanbits as steps towards CO2 neutral internet use.