With nuclear energy increasingly in favour again, saving our planet may depend on communicating with people 10,000 years from now.
Speaking to the future is a “blind spot” for humans, says Vincent Ialenti, a cultural anthropologist at the University of Southern California and The Berggruen Institute, and author of Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now. “We have ancient brains, and are focused on shorter time spans, like 24-hour news cycles or quarterly earnings. Many of us, through social media, are even stuck in fast-paced, dopamine-modulating information echo chambers.”